


Love and Some Verses

by oodal (softkyun)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Other, dad!kagami, dad!mine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 48,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softkyun/pseuds/oodal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagami Taiga is a single father of his adopted son, Tatsuya. He hardly expects to see much of the man he meets on Tatsuya's first day of school, but sure enough, two weeks later, Aomine Daiki and his son Ryouta move in right next door. </p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>  <em>"Love and some verses you hear</em><br/>say what you can't say<br/>love to say this in your ear,<br/>"I'll love you that way"<br/>from your changing contentments,<br/>what will you choose for to share?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> well this is the longest thing i've ever written oh my god. i hope you guys like it - there will be more to come soon, i hope~~ happy aokaga day!! 
> 
> the title of this work and the lyrics are from the iron & wine song, "love and some verses". c':

“ _Tatsuya_.”

Kagami shifted and crouched in front of the small child, reaching out gently. He took Tatsuya’s quivering hand in his own, which were so large that they completely covered Tatsuya’s. 

“Remember what we talked about? You’ll be just fine at school. I would never send you somewhere that you aren’t safe.” Despite his soft reassurances, Tatsuya continued to stare at him with wide, frightened eyes. His bangs fell just barely into the teary gaze of his right eye, and Kagami wanted to stand up and take his son home right then – forget his first day of kindergarten, forget learning, forget everything. He would take Tatsuya back to school when he was ready, and if that day wasn’t okay, then it wasn’t okay. He was almost in tears himself, facing this scenario, even if he’d been mentally prepping himself for it for days. He’d called ahead to the teacher, Mr. Kuroko, he’d been easing Tatsuya into it for weeks now… But…

Tatsuya still stood before him, his free hand – the one not clasped in Kagami’s hand – clutching his stuffed tiger for comfort. 

Kagami felt himself caving, and just as he started to pull his hands away from Tatsuya’s, the little boy’s jaw grew tight with tension and he gave one sharp, curt nod.

“Okay, papa. I can do it.” He whispered, voice barely able to be heard over the noise of the students rushing into the school behind them. Despite being on the front lawn of the kindergarten building – which was only full of kindergarten classes, even if Kagami had had to fight to get Tatsuya into the special school – it was still loud and noisy. He’d hoped it would be alright, but even around them now, parents were in similar situations, consoling noisy criers or prying off the last-minute clingers. 

Yet and still – with all of the commotion – Tatsuya agreed to go in, and Kagami beamed at him. Moving one hand up to touch his son’s dark hair, Kagami ruffled it tenderly before leaning in to press a fond kiss to Tatsuya’s forehead.

“That’s my ‘Suya.” He praised him, and Tatsuya managed a small smile in return, even if it was tentative and unsure. It was a step in the right direction, though. Once Kagami stood from the crouch he’d been in, Tatsuya moved like lightning to his side, clutching Kagami’s hand with his own and holding the stuffed animal to his chest.

“It’s just another building. We’ve been in them before, lots of them – the mall, the doctor’s, the grocery store…” Kagami continued to talk quietly as he led Tatsuya inside, knowing that the five year old was soothed by the sound of his voice, familiar in the clamor that surrounded them. Tatsuya became even more nervous as children began to mill past them in the hall, some of them even dragging their parents around. 

Kagami was so concerned with making sure that none of them bull-dozed Tatsuya that he didn’t exactly notice when he rounded the corner and found himself shoved by a large, broad shoulder.

“Ryouta!” 

The man didn’t even turn and apologize to him, instead rushing past Kagami without sparing a glance backwards. Kagami frowned, rolling his eyes at the man’s lackluster manners, and then looked down to check on Tatsuya. The boy seemed unphased by the collision, and with a sigh of relief, Kagami guided him towards the classroom door. The teacher’s name was painted in large, blocky characters above the doorway, and a short man with pale blue hair stood by the threshold, bowing politely as he introduced himself to new parents.

He did the same as Kagami approached, and after introductions had passed, the teacher eyed Kagami. 

“We spoke on the phone, if I remember correctly?”

Kagami nodded, and before he could say much else, Kuroko moved into a kneeling position in front of Tatsuya, who took a wary step back at the sudden movement.

“Hi, Tatsuya. I’m Mr. Kuroko, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We’re going to have a good time in class, okay? Your dad has told me all about you – things will be just fine. Why don’t you take your animal and go find a seat by the window? I’ve saved one just for you. Your dad tells me you’re great at reading your name, so I even wrote it on a card for you.”

Kagami tried to keep himself from flexing his hands too much as he watched Tatsuya for his reaction, nervous energy swelling. Sometimes, as mellow and quiet as his child was, he threw a fit – he wondered if it was genetic, but considering that he had never met Tatsuya’s biological parents, he would never know. 

Fortunately for him, Tatsuya nodded after a few moments, and slowly began to detach from Kagami’s left leg. Kagami tried to tell himself not to crouch again, not to whisper comforts to him, because this was a situation in which he needed to create space. The book he’d read had told him not to let Tatsuya get too dependent on him, or else it would make the boy’s social anxiety even worse. Instead, Kagami smiled at Tatsuya, and Kuroko took Tatsuya’s hand to take him into the classroom instead. Kagami’s chest tightened, and he managed to convince himself to turn away from the doorway.

Before he could make it more than three steps away from the room, though, he found himself with another child attached to his legs, but this time, it was definitely not on purpose. Kagami staggered a little bit as he stepped back from a boy about Tatsuya’s size who had suddenly collided with his leg.

He was, for a few moments, on the receiving end of one very feisty golden gaze, and then there was a familiar sound – 

“RYOUTA!”

The same man who had crashed into Kagami earlier was standing in front of him again, this time reaching out to pull on the hood of the blonde child’s t-shirt, tugging him away from Kagami’s legs with an angry huff. The small boy spun on his heel, arms crossing across his chest, and pouted. Kagami was suddenly incredibly relieved that Tatsuya had never used such an expression on him.

“Headband!” The boy suddenly yelled, and uncrossed his arms to stick both hands out at the tanned male who stood in front of him. Dark blue eyes flickered towards Kagami as if he might say something to him, then to the classroom, and then back down to the small blonde boy (who Kagami thought might be his son, despite the total lack of resemblance). 

“If I give you your headband, will you go to class?” The man asked, voice deep and quite agitated. Kagami stood frozen as he watched the transformation in the child, who went from radiating anger and frustration to a beaming ball of sunshine so quickly that Kagami almost couldn't keep up. 

“Yes!” Ryouta declared excitedly, and so with a long, drawn-out sigh, the dark-skinned male reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a headband. Stretching it out, he leaned towards the boy and began to pull it over his head, and the boy let out an astoundingly loud, “No!”

With a fast snatch of the accessory from his father's hands, the little blonde boy extended the blue elastic out on his own, and fixated an angry glare on the man in the suit.

“I can do it, daddy!” He said, sticking out his tongue, and then with continued remarkable speed, pulled the headband around his head and pushed his golden hair back. Poking his tongue out again once he had finished, he adjusted a couple of pieces of hair (although it was still a bit haphazard), and then grinned widely.

“School now!” He declared, and with a fast turn of his heel, he was off.

As the boy darted out of sight, the irritation on the dark man’s face melted off, and he finally seemed to acknowledge Kagami’s presence with a shrug of his shoulders, suit taut across his back.

“Sorry about that.” He finally said, and Kagami wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, considering that the rather insincere apology had come with a second shoulder shrug as well. Deciding that he didn’t need to add any more stress to his day, he forced a small smile, although it was definitely tense, and replied,

“It’s fine. My son was difficult, too, although… Not in quite that way.”

At this remark, the man threw back his head and laughed, and Kagami was struck with how handsome he was. His laughter was rich and dark; the flexing movement of the muscles in his neck as his head shifted was distracting, and god, his hair looked soft enough that Kagami wanted to thread his fingers through it and pull. His mouth went dry and he glanced to the side, swallowing compulsively and reaching to adjust the collar of his white work shirt. Shit, of course – now, when he wasn’t interested in dating anyone – he would meet a guy who was exactly in his type, and in a suit, no less.

Fortunately, the man didn’t seem to notice Kagami’s sudden conflict, because he stuck out a hand and grinned so broadly that Kagami could see where the blonde boy, Ryouta, had gotten it from.

“I’m Aomine Daiki, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Is your kid in Tetsuya’s class?”

It took a split second for Kagami to register that he hadn’t said Tatsuya, and he realized with surprise that Tetsuya was the first name of Tatsuya’s teacher. With a nod, Kagami reached out to take Aomine’s hand and shake it as he replied,

“Yeah, that’s him. I’m Kagami Taiga, and the pleasure’s mine.” _More than you know._

Shit.

Pulling his hand back, Aomine tapped his wrist with a lopsided smirk and turned back towards the entrance of the school. 

“I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve gotta get into the office. I’m assuming I’ll see you around, and hey – you look like you’ve just gotten told your dog got run over. Tetsuya’s great, believe me. Your boy’ll be fine.” Aomine snorted as he walked away, raising a hand in goodbye as he left Kagami standing there.

Although Aomine had no way of knowing that Kagami might even feel relieved if a dog got run over (well, that might be an exaggeration, but his dislike of dogs was… well, quite severe), Kagami felt comforted by the sentiment, even if he knew nothing about the dark-skinned male who’d bumped into him before his kid even did. Speaking of work, though… The redhead checked his phone and groaned. He’d told Atsushi that he’d be thirty minutes late for prep, and running a restaurant that only opened for dinner meant that the pre-prep was very important. Five-star and popular as hell or not, if things weren’t ready to go when the doors opened, his (rather intimidating) pastry chef would have his head. Dinner not being ready meant no dessert served, and if anyone messed with Atsushi’s desserts… Owner of the restaurant or not, Kagami’d find himself in deep shit.

He tried not to look at the closed door of Tatsuya’s classroom as he left the building. He steeled his anxious nerves and made himself leave the school; Aomine Daiki had disappeared as fast as he’d shown up, and as Kagami slid into the seat of his red SUV, he couldn’t help but check the back seat, where Tatsuya’s carseat rest empty in the middle chair. Choking on his own breath, Kagami turned back to the front, and tightened his grip on the wheel.

He wasn’t going to cry. This was a good day. He’d gotten Tatsuya into the classroom with no problems, even if he refused to let go of the stuffed animal. He hoped Tatsuya didn’t get into any arguments over that – no one was allowed to touch that tiger except for Tatsuya and Kagami himself. Should he go tell the teacher that? He hesitated as his hand went towards the door, fingers lingering over the handle. No, Tatsuya needed more independence. He knew this… and then his mahogany gaze drifted towards the forgotten coloring book in the passenger seat.

He ended up being even later to work than planned, and if Atsushi noticed his puffy, red-rimmed eyes, he didn’t say a word.

\---

Kagami certainly did not sit outside of school for thirty minutes before it left out because he didn’t want Tatsuya to ride the bus home his first day and feel overwhelmed. When he spotted the kids began to pour out, he stepped out of the car and stood against the door, eyes scanning intently for a familiar head of dark hair. He found it when it seemed like the rest of the kids had left – and Tatsuya was by himself, whereas the other kids had come in pairs. Kagami had even seen the blonde boy from earlier sprinting after a boy with green hair and glasses who looked quite frustrated. Yet and still, Tatsuya was alone, Tiger clutched against his chest and his purple backpack (his favorite color) slung over only one shoulder instead of two.

“Tatsuya!” He called over the noisy children, and Tatsuya changed direction (he’d looked quite lost for a few moments and Kagami had been about to get him) to come towards him. As he approached, Kagami instinctively began to check for damage – tear stains? Bruises? Dirty hands? Skinned knees? God, if someone had even touched Tatsuya, a single hair on his head ---

“Hi, papa.” Tatsuya greeted him, and his voice sounded relatively normal to Kagami. He tried to hide his relief from the boy as he helped him out of his backpack and up into his carseat, buckling him in and trying to ask questions as casually as possible.

“So how was your day? Did you make any new friends?”

Tatsuya stared at him blankly for a few moments before he leaned back into the carseat, wiggling a bit and absentmindedly playing with a thread-bare, somewhat tattered ear on the stuffed animal in his lap.

“I can’t remember everyone’s names and one boy was really loud. Louder than…” He looked as if he wanted something to compare it to, but then he just drifted off and picked up elsewhere, “I think I know his name, though.” 

Kagami had a sneaking suspicion he knew who Tatsuya would say it was before he asked him, and it was only confirmed when the child answered,

“Ryou. Ta.” Tatsuya said it slowly, and Kagami was relieved that Tatsuya had even connected – even if it was just enough to remember just one name – with someone in the class. 

“How about the rest of the day?” He asked as he closed the door, slipping quickly into the front seat so that Tatsuya doesn’t start talking into the car before Kagami is there (which he has done before, much to Kagami’s disappointment, since Tatsuya absolutely refuses to repeat himself). He didn’t miss anything much, though, because when Kagami checked the rearview mirror, Tatsuya was sitting and staring out the window at the school as it disappeared behind them.

“I liked it.” Tatsuya answered, curt as always, and Kagami had to blink away tears as he pulled out into the street. God, if he keeps crying like this, he’s going to dehydrate or something. Even as he admonished himself, however, his throat was far too tight to answer his son, and the rest of the car ride to the restaurant was accompanied only by the sound of the radio humming quietly in the background.

\---

“Daddy, I don’t want to move today! Absolutely not!”

“Ryouta – we’ve been planning this move for days, okay? And this is when I got the people to help us move all these boxes,” Aomine gestured to the cardboard boxes stacked in the foyer behind him, “so we don’t have to do it all alone. That’s good, right?” He’d even made sure not to move Ryouta too close to the first day of school – it had been two weeks since then, and he figured that now was an okay time.

“But I don’t want a new house!”

Aomine raised a hand to his forehead and massaged at his temple. Ryouta was… a handful. This much was obvious – the kid’s energy was boundless, he was social, excitable, and also as stubborn as a mule. Aomine hadn’t exactly had a great day at the office (being a detective rarely gave one good days in the office when cases were over with, though, considering the sheer amount of paper pushing he had to do) and he wasn’t prepared to deal with Ryouta’s second fit in one day. He wasn’t really this bad on a normal day, but a field trip at school had wound him up all night – he’d barely even slept, really. Aomine’d heard him bouncing around his room from down the hall at nearly three a.m.

“Ryouta, there’s no reason for us to live in this house. It’s too big!” Aomine knew there was no point in arguing actual logic as to why they had to move out of the house that Ryouta’d grown up in, considering that Ryouta would just argue against anything he said. They could technically still live in this house – Aomine’s salary could cover its size – but there was no point, and Aomine was sick of the memories that clung to it. He was still a bit raw over the divorce, even if it had been nearly a year ago, and this house reminded him of it. Sure, Ryouta’s first steps were here, his first word, his first birthday party – all of his firsts, really, except for his first tooth falling out, which had happened when Ryouta had gotten tired of it being all wiggly and yanked it out at Shintarou’s house. 

“I don’t care!” 

Aomine bit back a groan. What could he say that could co--- ah…

“It’s closer to school.”

Ryouta’s lower lip became a little less prominent. 

“The people who sold the house to me told me that there’s a little boy next door who is your age, too. You could make friends with him.”

Ryouta’s mouth widened into a perfect little ‘o’, and he began to bounce on the balls of his feet.

“You think he’ll wanna be friends, daddy?”

“He’d have to be a fool not to want to be friends with you.” Aomine reached out and poked the soft button curve of the tip of Ryouta’s nose. Ryouta wrinkled it but smiled toothily up at him anyways, and Aomine patted him on the back of the head with a chuckle.

“Go grab your backpack for me and sit on the porch swing out front so I can help the movers get the boxers into the truck, okay, Ryouta?”

“Okay!”

Once Ryouta had sprinted into the kitchen to get his backpack off of the kitchen table and come back holding it triumphantly, Aomine made sure he sat down on the porch. Rubbing his head again as his headache roared, Aomine began the task of packing their belongings and furniture into the truck. It was a good thing it was a Friday, because tonight was going to be a long one.

\---

“Papa, too much noise next door.”

Tatsuya murmured quietly as he leaned into Kagami, the scene of _Aladdin_ in which the genie introduced himself flickering across the television. It was near Tatsuya’s bedtime, but he’d begged Kagami for a movie, and so the two of them sat on the couch of their normally-quiet townhome with the familiar Disney story flashing on the screen. Kagami had expected Tatsuya to drift off as they watched – as he often did – but then the noise next door had started up. It wasn’t particularly late in the evening, being only around eight on a Friday night, but Tatsuya tired easily and was an early sleeper. Even if he hadn’t wanted to watch a movie, though, he’d still have been unable to sleep, because in the townhouse next door, the thin walls which pressed tight against their own were vibrating with movement and sound.

Who the fuck decided to move into a townhouse in a small community at eight o’clock on a Friday night?

“Do you want me to turn the movie up?” He asked, pulling the sleepy child into his lap and brushing his bangs away from his eye.

“Too loud.”

Kagami sighed, giving Tatsuya a gentle squeeze.

“I know, ‘Suya. If it doesn’t stop by the time the movie ends, I’ll go ask them to quiet down, okay?” Despite the calm tones, he was beyond agitated that the time he was getting with his little boy on a Friday night (which was rare, considering he usually didn’t get weekend nights off… Even if he made his own schedule, it wasn’t exactly good for the owner and head chef to be missing on the busiest nights of the week) was being compromised. Tatsuya’d had a rough day, however, considering that he’d cried twice on the fieldtrip – once when he’d tripped at the zoo, and the next when someone had touched Tiger – and Kagami wanted him to have a nice, relaxing night with his favorite movie.

Sighing, he turned his attention back to the television, and tried to wait out the noise.

It didn’t stop. Aladdin and Jasmine were in the midst of tricking Jafar, and yet and still, the clanking of heavy footfalls and dishes and what sounded like furniture being put together had yet to seize. With an agitated clearing of his throat, he shifted under Tatsuya, who looked blearily up at him, half-asleep but unable to fall asleep. Kagami felt like he was seeing red. It was close to being ten o’clock at night. Whatever asshole next door was moving in at ten o’clock at night was about to get a piece of Kagami Taiga’s mind.

“Tatsuya, I’m going to go get the noise to stop, okay? Don’t leave the couch or answer the door.”

“… I know.” Tatsuya yawned and didn’t look away from the movie, and Kagami ruffled his hair before turning towards the entrance and clenching his fists. He would solve this damn problem and Tatsuya would go to bed, and he’d proceed not to associate him with the asshole next door who was assembling a fucking airplane, or something similar, if you judged by all of the racket he was making. The townhouse complex was nice, but the walls weren’t made of million-dollar soundproof material.

Making sure to close the door gently behind him, popping the lock so that he didn’t lock himself out (he had before, and Tatsuya, true to his word, had not opened the door), he stood in front of the door of his new neighbor and debated what he was going to say.

As Kagami had a tendency to do, he didn’t exactly finish the planning before he raised a fist and rapped his knuckles _hard_ against the hard surface.

“Excuse me! It’s ten o’clock at night and you’re making a serious racket---“

His angry rant, even if it hadn’t been totally thought out yet, was ended prematurely when the door swung open and the words left Kagami’s mouth in a whoosh.

In front of him, a man who he had not seen in two weeks stood, dark skin glistening with sweat. A damp, tight tanktop clung to him and he wore athletic shorts, and it seemed that he, too, was lost for words because he had absolutely no idea what to say when faced with Kagami on the other side of the door. Kagami couldn’t get his brain to form anything coherent because Aomine’s chest flexed when he pulled the door rest of the way shut, and the muscles of his arms rippled beneath his skin – so much muscle, which Kagami could have only guessed lay hidden considering that he’d only seen Aomine in that suit (which was also flattering) – when he reached up to sheepishly rub his ear.

“Kagami Taiga, right?” Aomine wasn’t exactly eloquent, but the break in silence was enough that Kagami found his mental faculties somewhat working again.

“Yeah, and I’ve come to complain about the fact that it is _ten o’clock on a Friday night_ and it sounds like you’ve let a herd of elephants loose in your house.” He snapped, and as soon as he did, he regretted it.

Aomine’s eyes grew wide, and he whipped his head around. 

“Shit – hold on – give me two seconds ---“ Aomine spouted out fragments over his shoulder as he rushed from the doorframe, leaving Kagami standing there, unsure if he was actually invited to step into the room or not. Fuck it, he was going in. He stepped over the doorframe, nudging the door the rest of the way open and pausing in shock at what he saw. Boxes, everywhere – things were half unpacked, furniture half-put together. A television was hooked up and playing the news on low volume, and a couch was set up, but the coffee table was in pieces. The kitchen counter had boxes resting on it, labeled ‘utensils’, ‘weird machines’, and ‘kitchen’ (along with a couple ones with no names). He could only imagine what the other rooms looked like; plastic wrap was scattered in the hall and packing peanuts were everywhere.

Before he could observe much more of the whirlwind state of the townhouse, Aomine came back down the stairs, slightly out of breath as he came back to Kagami. 

“Oi, sorry ‘bout that. I set up Ryouta’s bed first and some of his stuff, but I forgot to tell him where his new bedroom was, so for a second there I thought he would still be awake or something, but he found it himself and was sound asleep.”

That was a lot of words in a short amount of time, but Kagami only found fault with one thing.

“Wait – he sleeps with this amount of noise?” He asked, incredulous and disbelieving, and Aomine eyed him before chuckling and rubbing the back of his neck.

“I think Ryouta’d sleep through a heavy metal concert if I let ‘im.” 

Still a little angry, Kagami couldn’t keep himself from barking out a reply:

“Well, Tatsuya can’t, and thanks to you he’s been hopelessly sleepy and unable to actually sleep for, say, two hours now?”

Aomine balked at him, and then held to hands up.

“You could’ve come to say something earlier.”

Kagami narrowed his eyes, and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Well _I_ was being polite.” 

Aomine opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, before closing it with an audible snap. When his laps parted again, it was with laughter, and before Kagami could scold him for laughing, he found it was infectious; a bit embarrassed by his sharp behavior, Kagami rubbed the crease between his brows and shook his head.

“I guess Tatsuya’s not the only one who needs to be put to bed.” Kagami joked at his own expense, smile a bit boyish as he met Aomine’s gaze again.

The dark skinned male smirked and ran a hand through his damp hair.

“Yeah, I’d get on that, if I were you. I’ll go ahead and stop for the night now. I really didn’t realize what time it was, though, so my bad. That, and I’m not used to have neighbors who can hear what’s going on, so I don’t think it even crossed my mind…”

The apology seemed genuine enough, and after a few more brief remarks, Kagami wished Aomine a “goodnight, and welcome to the neighborhood” before heading back into his own home.

He carried a sleeping Tatsuya to bed, tucked him into his indigo covers, and then crawled away to oblivion for the night.

\---

The restaurant needed taking care of that weekend, and after getting Friday night off, there was no way that Kagami was going to be able to get out of Saturday or Sunday, much to his chagrin. During the long days spent in the workplace, Tatsuya spent his time with his favorite (well, they were the only ones he would ever allow without leaving a fit when Kagami left him) babysitters. To be honest, as well, they were the only babysitters that Kagami really trusted, either. 

Hyuuga, Kiyoshi, and Riko all lived together (he didn’t ask about the arrangements – didn’t feel the need to know, really) at the apartment complex just across the street from Kagami’s restaurant. He wasn’t sure of how they’d ended up together . Kiyoshi and Riko made sense, considering the pair of them ran the local gym together, but Hyuuga ran a vintage book and video-game store that was three blocks over. That wasn’t important, really; what was important was that Kagami had known Kiyoshi and Riko both because of that gym before he’d even adopted Tatsuya when he was only an infant, and so when the time had rolled around that he needed some help with childcare, he’d gone to them because he trusted them.

Hyuuga was so anal about baby safety (he’d babyproofed their entire apartment before Tatsuya had even been there the first time) that Kagami decided the guy wasn’t so bad, either.

Despite the trust he placed in them, it was with a release of tension and a happy sigh that he gathered Tatsuya up in his arms at the end of each day, carried him and Tiger home, and fell asleep with him in the master bedroom each night.

He’d been so occupied with his job that he hadn’t even noticed what had occurred next door; in the span of the weekend, Aomine Daiki had almost entirely managed to move himself. The clothes were unpacked, the furniture put together – only a few boxes remained, but they were things that weren’t necessary right now. Aomine’d surprised Ryouta by taking him to a local ice cream shoppe (even though he told himself he had to stop giving Ryouta so many sweets), and he was thoroughly satisfied with the new townhouse.

He had worried at first. Ryouta accepted change well, but he’d lived in the same house for all of his five years. Five years didn’t feel like a lot to Aomine (in fact, it was like it had gone by in a blink of an eye, he thought as Ryouta shrieked that ‘daddy, I can do it!’ whenever Aomine offered to do something for him, whether he could do it or not). However, five years was a lot for a little boy, and Aomine didn’t know how he’d take moving into a smaller house, even if this one was just as nice as the first.

Ryouta loved it, and Aomine was so grateful that he kissed the styrafoam box of the take out when it arrived on Saturday night. Sunday night was filled with more unpacking, and they had leftovers from the takeout before (Aomine promised Ryouta he’d go grocery shopping while he was at school tomorrow, even though the dark-skinned male really should be at work). 

“Night, Ryou.”

“Night, daddy. Ice cream tomorrow?”

“We’ll see.”

\---

“Ryouta, oi, Ryouta, come on!”

“Daddy, you didn’t get my favorite blue shirt!”

“Unlock this door!”

“No!”

“RYOUTA!”

Aomine was about ready to kick the door in (although it’d probably be a bad idea, considering that they’d just moved in a couple days ago) when the door slowly creaked open, and he found himself on the end of one teary gaze.

“I wanna wear my best blue shirt today.”

“I know right where I unpacked it on Saturday, okay? Let me come show you, you little butt-munch.”

Ryouta pulled the door open, standing in a pair of shorts with socks haphazardly on each foot and nothing else. Despite the fact that he was still a little upset that Ryouta had locked him out of his room (his kid was such a diva, and although Aomine’d never admit it, he knew it probably came from him), Aomine couldn’t help but shake his head fondly at the boy as he walked right over to the closet and pulled out Ryouta’s favorite blue shirt.

“You hung it too high!”

“That’s because you’re supposed to let me come pick out your outfits. Don’t lock your door again, you hear me?”

“… Yes, daddy.”

\---

“Today’s gonna be a better day.” Kagami pressed a soft kiss to Tatsuya’s forehead and stood up, offering his hand and squeezing gently when Tatsuya’s hand slipped into his grip.

Checking to make sure everything was properly back in Tatsuya’s backpack for today, Kagami let Tatsuya lead him out of the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him. For the first time since Kagami’s angry outburst at Aomine’s door, Kagami found himself face-to-face with a very flustered Aomine (in a suit again, shit).

“Ryouta, you’ve made me late.” Aomine grumbled, but Ryouta wasn’t paying attention – not at all.

“Tatsuya!!” The blonde squealed, darting away from his father to throw his arms around a stiff, but surprisingly not-frightened Tatsuya. Smiling at Ryouta briefly, Kagami looked to Aomine and arched an eyebrow.

“Running late?” He asked, even if the question was obvious.

Huffing, Aomine reached up to adjust the tie around his neck, which was slightly crooked. Kagami would have pointed it out, but considering he barely knew how to tie a tie, he didn’t know if he was allowed to make that kind of criticism. 

“Yeah, because one little dude threw a fit this morning.”

“Ryouta? I never would’ve guessed.”

Aomine glanced up and it was his turn for his brows to rise, and his hands stilled where they were still trying to fix the position of his tie as it lay awkward against his crisp white dress shirt. 

“You sayin’ something about my boy?”

“… Never.”

Aomine huffed and rolled his eyes, muttering something that sounded especially not-child-safe beneath his breath. Kagami snorted as he tried to catch his laughter, and couldn’t help but laugh even more at Tatsuya’s quiet, “Papa, okay?” at his side. Yeah, he was okay, but it took him a few seconds to gather his breath before he looked back at Aomine. 

“Want me to take Ryouta in?”

Aomine, who had continued to mutter something about the paperwork in his hand that sounded suspiciously like ‘the only one who can do paperwork well is me, this is the last damn time I let Wakamatsu deal with my business’, made a soft sound and gave no reply.

“I said, I can drive Ryouta in when I take Tatsuya. That way you can try to be a little less late.”

The dark skinned male seemed to get it this time. He was shocked – he’d just met the guy, and yet here he was, offering to give him a ride? He’d… well, although a bit feisty, the redhead seemed like the nice type, and Aomine was running really late….

“Oh, daddy, please! A car adventure with Tacchi!” Ryouta’s voice was borderline-begging, and Kagami was glad that he didn’t have to face those puppy eyes as Aomine cursed their existence.

“Fine, fine. Be safe. You have a car seat for him, right? If you don’t he abso—“

“I have one.”

“You’re a safe driver and all that?”

“Scouts’ honor.”

“… I’m not going to ask about that, I don’t have time. Thanks, Kagami, I owe you one. I’ve gotta go, though.”

The man unlocked the sleek black compact car in his home’s parking spot, sliding into it and then rolling down the passenger side window. He leaned towards it and narrowed his eyes.

“Hurt him and you won’t only be complaining about noise.”

Kagami burst out laughing, so severely he found himself holding his sides.

“Want my cell?”

Aomine pulled out a cellphone and shoved it through the open window at him. Kagami pulled open the screen and typed in his number as a contact, making sure to save it before he handed it back to Aomine. Aomine checked it, and then nodded.

“A private investigator can do a lot of things with a cell number.” He said, and Kagami tried to ignore the shivers that went down his spine when he realized that the other male might just be a fucking _detective_ of all things. He was not prepared for that, but then again, he should’ve guessed from the suit. Speaking of the suit…

“A mother hen in a suit, I never thought I’d see the day.”

The only answer he got was the rev of Aomine’s engine as he pulled out of the parking spot, and Kagami turned back to his SUV and eyed the pair.

“Ryouta, I’m Tatsuya’s dad, and I’m gonna drive you to school today – is that okay?” Ryouta nodded so fast that it made Kagami’s head hurt.

“Well then, let’s get the two of you buckled in, then.” He pulled Tatsuya’s spare carseat from the back seat and got to work, and now that he’d stopped talking, Ryouta’s endless chatter started up again. 

Kagami tried to ignore the tightening of his chest at the tiny smile on Tatsuya’s lips.

\---

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Still ended up late 4 work. Was Ryouta ok?_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_If you mean running his mouth 100 miles a minute, yes.  
I drive fine._

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_I didn’t ask but thanks 4 tellin_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_I’m a dad, I know you wanted to._

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_The best dads are 2 cool 4 school_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_… Do I need to pick Ryouta up?_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_U pick Tatsuya up? Ryouta rides the bus I made him memorize his new #_

Kagami felt so sufficiently embarrassed that he refused to let Tatsuya ride the bus home, and so, the conversation ended.

\---

“Daddy, Tacchi is so smart!”

Aomine glanced up from the Legos in front of him to the excited face of his son. Ryouta smashed two of the plastic pieces together with a gleeful laugh, wiggling where he sat.

“Today Mr. Kuroko gave us a book to read and Tacchi knew, like, all the words! He’s good at reading! Better than me!”

“Better than you, bud?”

“Way better! Gosh, Tatsuya is so cool! He’s my best friend!”

Aomine mumbled a quiet, ‘you’re going to break them if you keep hitting them like that’ as he pulled the Lego pieces away from Ryouta. 

“Can I go play at Tacchi’s house? He’s so close!”

“… I’ll think about it.”

\---

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Ryouta wants 2 hang out with Tatsuya_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_I live less than a minute away - you couldn’t have knocked and asked?_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_I don’t know if ur home geez ur always so angry_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_You’re a piss-poor detective  
We’ll be home at 5, he can come over then_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_He’s never been 2 ur house before he isn’t coming alone_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_** We’ll be home at 5, you can both come over then_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Woulda done it even if u didn’t say I could_

This time, Kagami ended the conversation with a roll of his eyes.

\---

“It’s always Ryouta this, Ryouta that, or school this, school that. I think those are the only two things that go through his head.” 

Kagami plopped back down onto his couch besides Aomine, the other man sprawled on the opposite end. It’d been a surprise to find out that they both had an incredible passion for basketball, despite not playing after their high school careers had ended, and after a few joking promises of one-on-ones, it had mostly resulted in some very routine viewing of basketball matches on television. Although their schedules didn’t match up often for them to watch every single game, they had watched a couple together by now. 

“Feet off the coffee table, you ass.”

Kagami didn’t even look in Aomine’s direction as he heard the familiar thump of socked feet on the wooden surface of the table in front of them.

“What if Tatsuya heard your language?”

“I can literally hear them walking around upstairs, Ahomine. They can’t hear us.”

“I’m wounded by your cruel words.” Aomine’s tone was fake-sweet and wounded as he pressed a hand dramatically to his forehead, leaning back even further against the worn support of Kagami’s couch. After a few moments pause, Aomine spoke up again.

“My socks are clean.”

“No.”

The dark-skinned male snickered and turned back to the game. Kagami did the same, content in companionable silence when he hadn’t had much company but Atsushi and the gym trio in a long, long while.

\---

“Ryouta wasn’t at school today.”

“Any clue why?”

Tatsuya gave a dejected sounding sigh, even climbing into his chair in a way that seemed sad and full of despair. Kagami turned away from the stove, where he was finishing up a meal for Tatsuya to take with him to Riko’s, to place his elbows on the counter and have the suddenly serious conversation face-to-face with Tatsuya, who was laying his head on Tiger where he rest on the counter in a terribly endearing manner.

“I feel sad without Ryouta at school. Too quiet.”

“I’ll text his dad and see if everything is okay. Will that make you feel better?” 

Tatsuya’s pitiful nod was enough for Kagami to reach into the pocket of his dress pants and pull out his cell.

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_Everything alright?_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Both of us r sick. I’m ready to pull my gun out_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_Need anything?_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Wrm soup and a new sinus system_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_Don’t know what to do about the sinus part._

Setting his phone down and ignoring the additional buzz of a message, Kagami glanced towards Tatsuya and smiled softly.

“Ryouta and his dad are sick. Do you wanna draw them a get well picture?”

Tatsuya sat up quickly and nodded fervently, a habit he seemed to be picking up from Ryouta. As cute as it was, Kagami was also a little fearful of whiplash, but it hadn’t happened yet. Before Kagami had the chance to say anything else, Tatsuya was scrambling to his backpack to get some paper and crayons, and Kagami turned to his fridge. Did he have time for a complex soup? No. But did he have leftovers of the chicken noodle soup that he’d made for Tatsuya and himself because it was one of Tatsuya’s favorite foods?

Yes – yes he did. 

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_U r an angel I take back all the times I called u bakagami_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_Did Ryouta like Tatsuya’s card and the soup?_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_He’s so emotional he cried tears of joy over it. I’m srs_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_I’d believe it. Get some rest, Tatsuya and I are leaving for the night_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Bless ur redheaded angel soul thank god I met u moving in was the best decision ever_

Kagami tried to ignore the fluttering of angel wings in his own chest as he tucked the phone back into his pocket, heading out the door with Tatsuya following suit.

“Papa, why are you smiling so big?”

“No reason, ‘Suya.”

\---

“I haven’t had a beer in ages. I don’t like drinking when no one’s around to watch Ryouta, even if it’s just one, y’know?” Aomine took another swig of the drink in his hand, relaxing back into his own couch this time around and turning to Kagami, who was looking at him with the strange intensity that always seemed to be there. Kagami was just an intense guy, he figured – like father, like son, even though Tatsuya’s intense levels were far quieter and controlled than his father’s. He’d come to learn a lot about the dark-haired boy in the past month, and his dad, too – shit, they spent so much time together, not only as neighbors, but as parents, chauffeuring their kids back and forth to school, and more. The two of them were remarkably similar, but different at the same time; it was their similarities that sometimes got them into trouble, considering the snappy conversations they had sometimes, particularly over basketball, and the competitive spirit that they shared.

“Yeah, the last time I had one was… Shit, I don’t even know.” Ryouta and Tatsuya were both passed out upstairs; it was just the two of them on the couch, and Aomine’d probably head home soon, considering that he didn’t have the heart to remove Ryouta from the blanket fort the pair had made. Not only that, but he’d wake Tatsuya up (that boy was the polar opposite of his son, he swore by it) and Kagami’d probably skin his hide ten ways to Sunday if that happened.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Aomine asked after another swallow of beer, and Kagami shook his head. 

“Minor kitchen renovations. Trying to get rid of me that fast, nn?” Aomine snorted at the sarcastic question from the other man, and placed the (shit, Kagami hadn’t been counting how many) finished bottle of beer down the table by the armrest with a contemplative hum.

“I was just thinking, back when my wife and I were still together, we didn’t… Hell if we ever spent time like this together.” Kagami was startled by this revelation. He tried not to react too much outwardly, but his mind raced with new information – he’d known Aomine was divorced, mostly because Aomine had said something about it maybe one time, but he didn’t know much else about Aomine’s marriage. He shouldn’t be so painfully interested in Aomine, who was obviously a straight man, but… He got vibes from Aomine sometimes, really. He did. And… there had to be some reason that it didn’t work out with his wife, right? Maybe _that_ was it. He considered prodding Aomine for a little more info – just a bit, he swore – but he didn’t have to, because the bluenette spoke up again, eyes trained on the ceiling.

“I stayed with her because I loved my son. How could you not, honestly? She wasn’t… she wasn’t great to him, really. We fought a lot. She was distant, a drifter – shit, we weren’t ready to get tied down, the two of us.” Aomine paused and put his hands over his eyes briefly before dragging them down his face.

“I came home from a father-son trip with Ryouta to the amusement park and caught her cheating on me. She fucked me up real bad, y’know?” Kagami didn’t know what to do with his information, quiet and still as he sat on the couch, the sound between them only the hum of the television and the gentle lull of their breathing.

Aomine sighed and mumbled something that sounded like an apology, but Kagami wasn’t entirely sure if it was – either way, though, the idiot rolled onto his side and promptly passed out. After a few moments in disbelief, Kagami stood, threw a blanket over his sleeping form, and moved to the recliner to catch some sleep… even if it wouldn’t come easy with the replays of Aomine’s confessions in his head.

\---

“Papa, can you please pack more in my lunch?”

Kagami found himself once again in the kitchen – a place he very much loved to be – with his son at the breakfast bar behind him. Turning away from the violet lunchbox that he put Tatsuya’s lunch into every day, the redhead looked curiously from the lunchbox, and then back to Tatsuya.

“Is it not enough for you?”

Tatsuya shifted in a manner that screamed guilty, the red flag being the way that the boy pulled his stuffed animal towards his face in a desperate attempt to try and conceal himself. Kagami leaned across the counter, tugging the tail of the animal until it allowed him to see Tatsuya’s eyes again.

“Tatsuya. The truth, please, and don’t make me ask twice.” Kagami’s voice was low and stern, but not angry – he wouldn’t be upset if Tatsuya wanted more to eat (although he was absolutely not ready for his boy to grow any taller) but he also knew from the way that Tatsuya had reacted to his earlier question that it was probably not such a case.

“R-ryouta’s papa doesn’t pack him very good lunches… and the school food isn’t good… so he takes mine and I want him to get a whole lunch plus me too.” Tatsuya stammered through the words but managed to get it all out, and Kagami’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean that his papa doesn’t pack him good lunches?” Kagami asked slowly, already imagining punching Aomine square in the face if he was feeding Ryouta shitty food.

“Uhm.. usually… peeby-jay—“ “Peanut butter and jelly or PB & J, please” “PB n J, and some chips, and… a banana…? Papa, are you angry with me?”

Kagami hadn’t realized the way that his hands had started to tighten on the edge of the counter, and with visible effort, he pulled them away and massaged his suddenly-tense fingers.

“No, no, baby. I’m not mad at you at all. I just feel sad that Ryouta doesn’t get yummy lunches too, okay? How about I see if we can go visit Ryouta right now, okay?” Kagami leaned forward and brushed Tatsuya’s bangs, which were in need of a good cut, away from his eyes. The small boy perked up visibly and nodded his approval of the plan, which Kagami only caught out of his peripheral as his fingers were currently occupied with flying over the keyboard of his phone.

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_I can’t believe you oh my fucking god_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_Shit what I’m logging hours from home right now u need something_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_PB & J, chips, and a banana are you fucking kidding me_

_To: Kagami Taiga  
From: Aomine Daiki_

_I’m v lost rn_

_To: Aomine Daiki  
From: Kagami Taiga_

_I’m coming over_

It took all of Kagami’s power not to slam the phone down onto the table. Really – Aomine Daiki lives next to a chef of one of the top restaurants in the area, the owner even, and he sends his kid – Kagami’s son’s best friend – to school with a lunch like that. Food wasn’t hard to do; sure, it got complex and difficult in the higher levels, but at basic levels? Stuff for kids’ lunches? That was not hard, nor was it time-consuming. 

It didn’t cross his mind that Aomine Daiki had no idea how to make anything but Kraft macaroni and cheese until the man told him himself, as Kagami stood in his kitchen and brandished a spatula at him. It did, however, cross his mind that in order for anyone to be saved – Aomine’s ass from his foot, Ryouta’s poor stomach from disgusting packaged foods every day, or Kagami from himself as he threatened to implode with rage – he was going to need to teach Aomine Daiki how to cook.

\---

It might have been a little bold, and maybe a little domestic, but Kagami taught Aomine how to cook, and made a few meals in the other male’s kitchen along the way, too. It became routine for the redhead to come over to Aomine’s with arms full of leftovers from the restaurant (they never reused things, after all; it was always freshly made that day, hence why prep sucked and why Atsushi always consumed so many of his own creations when the day ended). He stuck papers with stupidly easy and healthy recipes on Aomine’s fridge, and at one point he even began to help try and plan out meals for Ryouta’s lunches to try and make sure that Aomine put together things that were decent, especially in comparison to the peanut butter and jelly tragedy of days past.

However, all of these actions came down to one core problem: Aomine Daiki could not cook. No matter how many times Tatsuya had giggled at the fat chef that said, ‘Everybody can cook!’, such a motto was simply not true in the real world. As Aomine somehow managed to make the most disgusting, bland, and overdone scrambled (scrambled! Of all kinds he could’ve messed up, he messed up the easiest!) eggs, Kagami took it upon himself to cook for Aomine as frequently as possible.

\---

“That smells good. You have to show me how to make it.” Aomine groaned behind him and Kagami sighed, rolling his shoulders as he shifted the contents of the wok and tipped in a little more soy sauce into the stir fry. Once that was done, however, he turned his head with narrowed eyes towards Aomine, who was leaning against the fridge and smirking at him, as if he knew exactly what the redhead in front of him was going to say next.

“Too hard for you. You’d make it not smell good.” Kagami’s response had barely left his lips when Aomine snorted at him, giving him a playful shove towards the stove with the flat of his palm pressed between Kagami’s shoulder blades. Kagami flushed, and not just because of the heat radiating off of the wok beneath him. Was it just him or had Aomine been getting… touchier? Kagami didn’t know if he was taking it the wrong way, but… he just…

Shaking his head slightly to clear it a bit – or try, at least – he turned the heat down to let the vegetables soften in the mixture and untied his apron, slinging it over the hook on the side of the fridge where his others hung. 

“Shoving people in front of hot stoves is a safety hazard.”

“Yeah, yeah, children are safety hazards, and we both have ‘em too, y’know?”

Kagami’s mouth fell open slightly at Aomine’s remark, but then he laughed with another shake of his head. He felt like he shook his head at Aomine constantly – but it was far too fond for it to be disapproving, even though he did like to shoot Aomine disapproving looks quite often (especially when his language slipped around Ryouta or Tatsuya. Bad language was fine when not around innocent ears. If Tatsuya picked up swear words – or Ryouta, considering that the boy had become like his own son – Kagami’d have his head. Then again, Aomine wasn’t exactly keen on either picking up swear words and Kagami was no saint, so… it was a two-way street).

But, speaking of the children…

The redhead glanced towards the living room, where the two of them sat together with coloring books spread all around them. They weren’t allowed to use markers on the carpet, but otherwise, the two of them were perfectly content to sit together, surrounded by crayons and colored pencils and half-colored pages. Kagami couldn’t help the fond smile that spread across his face, and he saw it reflected in Aomine’s expression as well. 

Kagami’s interested was peaked as he watched Ryouta lean in towards Tatsuya, beckoning him in with a soft tug on his shirt. Of course, from where they stood, they couldn’t hear the words that Ryouta whispered into Tatsuya’s ear, but it was interesting all the same to see the almost imperceptible nod that Tatsuya gave in return. Despite Kagami’s encouragement to try and get Tatsuya to respond with words more often, he still tended to return to the head shaking. It was okay for now, Kagami supposed, but… w…

His train of thought came to a screeching halt as Tatsuya reached into his lap and lifted Tiger from his resting place. After a few moments of petting that thread-bare, worn fabric atop his head, Tatsuya’s hands – without even a hint of a quiver or a shake – began to extend towards Ryouta. Ryouta’s eyes glittered, fully exposed as his hair was pushed out of his face by the broad fabric headband he’d put in place earlier, and he stuck out his own hands but did not reach. Kagami’s breath caught and he leaned towards the counter.

Tatsuya, who refused to let anyone but his papa touch his stuffed tiger – Tatsuya, who had cried on a field trip only a month ago when someone had tried to touch it – Tatsuya, who hadn’t let anyone touch it on purpose for almost as long as Kagami could remember – his boy – his Tatsuya - 

One of Kagami’s hands came up to his mouth to cover it, and the other clutched the fabric of his own shirt desperately, grasping it tightly, fearing in the split second as the tiger transferred hands that something would go wrong – and then Tatsuya smiled at Ryouta, and the blonde boy returned it, and Kagami thought his knees might give out behind him. He choked behind his hand, felt the tears welling in his eyes, thought of the psychiatrist appointments where they told him Tatsuya might never get along with children his age, thought of the warnings he’d gotten in the adoption process, thought of every single sign that had ever pointed the other way ---

“Papa’s crying?” Tatsuya asked, gravity of the situation lost on him as he stared curiously at his father.

Aomine threw his arm around Kagami’s shoulder, the warmth of his body comforting and secure against Kagami’s where it rest, and grinned at the two boys in the living room.

“I think he’s just real happy, little guy.” He told him, and then he made eye contact with Ryouta and winked. With his free hand, he gave him a thumbs up, and the sound of the little boy’s laughter as it joined with his dad’s rang through the room.

\---

A month later, the week of Halloween, Kagami decided that it might be time to make a move. He and Aomine spent most all of their time off of work together, Ryouta and Tatsuya were attached at the hip – everything seemed, well – he didn’t want to jinx it - _perfect_. Two nights ago, he and Aomine had been watching a match together (not a very good one, admittedly), and Aomine had fallen asleep besides him on the couch, drifting to the side until his head rest on Kagami’s shoulder, where he slept for a solid hour or so. Aomine’d apologized when he woke up, but he didn’t seem weirded out or anything, and Kagami… well, he took it as a bit of a green light, you could say.

Tonight was the night, he’d decided as he drove home from work. Aomine was babysitting, if you could even call it that, in Kagami’s place; he had no idea what the trio had decided to do, but as he turned his key in the door, he could hear the familiar music of _Aladdin_ coming from the living room. Kagami almost laughed at the predictability, as he should’ve guessed that Tatsuya would force them to watch that movie with them. It was his favorite, after all, and he particularly liked watching the scenes with Jasmin and Rajah at least five times each time. Ryouta was terribly indulgent of Tatsuya, too, and went along with almost anything ‘Tacchi’ said, anyways. Aomine was no better most of the time.

He slipped out of his shoes as he stepped in and made a beeline for the fridge, slipping some leftovers away before he caught sight of the pizza box on the counter.

“Pizza?”

“Guilty as charged, chef.”

Kagami threw his chef’s jacket at Aomine and threw himself down on the couch next to him, aching. Tonight had been stupidly busy – did people just like to eat out more around Halloween, or something? Aomine dragged the fabric off of his face, remarking on it smelling quite spicy, and pushed it onto the floor. Kagami was tempted to make a remark about him making a mess of his nice townhouse, but considering the fact that he was far too fired to duke it out over anything, he didn’t even twitch towards the lump on the carpet.

“Long night?”

Kagami groaned and raised his hands to press his palms over his eyes in response.

“You?” He managed to say after a few minutes more of sitting in silence, trying to ignore his aching legs and back and god, was he this out of shape? He needed to hit the gym if this was the case. Either that, or he was getting old… and he refused to accept the second, so the first was the only plausible option. How terrible.

“Lonely. So lonely. _I got nobody_ …”

“Ears are bleeding.”

“Assho— Ouch!”

Even with his lack of energy, Kagami’d managed a well-placed punch to Aomine’s thigh. Aomine hissed at him and rubbed the spot, acting quite the wounded cat. Kagami hadn’t put enough power into that to really hurt him – just enough to shut him up.

“The kids are right there, y’know.” He muttered, and Aomine spoke with a pout that sounded like an eerily mature version of Ryouta’s infamous one, “They don’t pay attention to me. Hence, lonely.” 

Kagami couldn’t hold his tongue as he spoke this time around, turning his face towards Aomine as he did,

“I’m home now?” He offered, unsure whether or not he should speak boldly or tentatively or shyly – how should he approach it? He didn’t know, but as soon as he had, he almost regretted it. He thought he saw Aomine’s shoulders tense up and tighten; though the lines of his muscles flexed in his arms, but as soon as he thought he’d saw it, it was gone. It was probably a trick of his paranoid eye – he thought that was pretty much confirmed, too, by the easy-going tone of Aomine’s reply.

“You ain’t shit, lil’ sous chef. I’m not interested in sous chefs.” Kagami was relieved that the only light source in the room came from the television that the two boys were fixated on as his face began to burn. He kept his back relaxed and his hands at his side as he watched the television too (well, looked, considering he wasn’t really paying much attention to the movie at all) as he drew in a soft breath and asked,

“What are you interested in?” 

This time, he knew that the tense muscles he had seen the first time had not been a mistake. He saw it again this time, saw it in the flex of his jaw, saw it the tightening of his hands around the blanket thrown haphazardly over one leg.

“No.” 

Ice struck its way through Kagami’s chest, his throat so tight that he thought he was going to lose it. He didn’t mean it – he was tired – he was just joking around – he wanted to say all these things but it wouldn’t come, because suddenly Aomine’s dark gaze was turned on him with an intensity that Kagami had never faced from the male before; hatred.

“I’m not _gay_ , Kagami.” He spat, and the word was so venomous that Kagami thought it might pollute the air. He struggled to breathe, panic setting in, wanted his apologies to come as quickly as they could, but he couldn’t get them around the knot of his throat. Sorry – he was so sorry he hadn’t meant any of it, wasn’t it funny – 

“That what all of this was? Shit, I should’ve known. People like you are so underhanded, so manipulative, shit – you’d do whatever you wanted to get into someone’s pants, wouldn’t you, even use a kid? That’s what all of this was, cooking meals for me. Well, newsflash for you, Kagami Taiga.” Aomine stood, blanket falling, and turned towards Kagami, who sat petrified on the couch, a million things running through his mind and none of them escaping, none of them forming. His breathing didn’t even come right, irregular and tight.

“I’m not a fucking _fag_ , and I don’t associate with _your kind_ , and I’ll be damned if my son is around you for one moment more. You better pray Tatsuya doesn’t turn out like you.” With each point, he jabbed his finger into the dirty button up Kagami still wore, and Kagami felt it to his very core.

Aomine pulled his hand and wiped it across his shirt as if he couldn’t stand to have anything Kagami had touched on him. He turned to Ryouta and picked him from the floor, the stuffed tiger which the two boys had been holding onto as they watch falling to the floor between them. 

“We’re leaving, Ryouta.”

“But daddy---“

“Don’t you daddy me right now, Ryouta Daiki.” His voice was so sharp that it could’ve cut through diamond. Tatsuya rushed to pick up the tiger where it had fallen, eyes wide and scared and beyond all, confused.

As Aomine carried the blonde boy to the door, Kagami could hear the child speak up.

“Tomorrow, then, daddy?”

“Not tomorrow, Ryouta. Not ever.” 

\---

_”You’ve reached the personal cell of Aomine Daiki. Can’t take your call at the moment, please leave a message and your name and number so I can return your call.”_

“A-Aomine, shit, please – please pick up. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I never would’ve – I didn’t mean.” Kagami’s voice broke as he tried to say his apology into the phone, and he gulped for air as he stood in the employee bathroom at the restaurant, hands barely steady enough to hold the cell by his ear.

“I--- Fuck, I---“ He couldn’t stop the tears from starting to spill again, for the millionth time since that fateful event three days ago. Aomine had walked out, and true to his word, Kagami hadn’t seen him since. Ryouta hadn’t been back over since, and Tatsuya hadn’t been to see Ryouta at anywhere but school. Tatsuya was confused and hurt by the fact that Ryouta no longer came over.

“Please, for Tats---“ He began to beg, and the beep sounded again.

The seventh voicemail Kagami left Aomine ended before he could finish it, just like the six ones before it had.

\---

_”You’ve reached the personal cell of Aomine Daiki. Can’t take your call at the moment, please leave a message and your name and number so I can return your call.”_

“Aomine, I swear, Halloween is tomorrow and if you could be a decent enough human being to pick up your phone you would know that all I want is for Tatsuya to go trick-or-treating with Ryouta. He won’t stop talking about it and I’m terrified you won’t let them go together. Please, please, just call me back, or talk to me, _something_.”

He ended this phone call before it beeped at him, and put his head in his hands.

\---

When the knock sounded at his door, Kagami’s leapt from the kitchen table as his heart leapt into his throat. No one really came knocking – and it wasn’t time for trick-or-treat yet, even though dusk would come soon – very often, and so there was only one possibility for who stood on the other side of that door. Kagami was pissed – he was pissed and upset and devastated, really – but he was relieved. Tatsuya was upstairs in his tiger costume and Kagami had done his face paint and everything, and if he had to bring Tatsuya out and about alone… Well…

He swung open the door to see just who he wanted to see. Ryouta was dressed as a little Indian, a feather headband (what a surprise) in his hair as beads dangled from his neck and fringe danced with every movement.

“Ryouta, go upstairs and make sure Tatsuya is ready to go, okay? Make sure he has something to carry candy in.” Aomine gave Ryouta a pat on the back and sent him towards the stairs to the middle floor where Tatsuya’s bedroom was. As soon as the tiny moccasin feet were out of sight, Aomine’s expression hardened, and he turned back to Kagami.

“I’m taking Tatsuya for Ryouta, not for you.” Kagami nodded at this.

“I will take him with one requirement. You can’t come.”

Kagami had seen it from a mile away, and it still hit him like a basketball out of nowhere to the head. He opened his mouth once, closed it, and then took a quiet breath.

“I understand. Thank you.” 

It hurt to stand there any longer, so he turned to the stairs to go and break the news to Tatsuya.

\---

“No, baby, please, I’d never be mad at you and punish you like this. I have to go into work, okay? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, okay? You’ll have fun with Ryouta and his dad, I know you will.”

\---

Kagami sat on the couch until Tatsuya returned. The boy shared quietly excited, but suspiciously empty, stories about his candy, which Kagami helped him sort through, and he let him have one piece before he rubbed over his face with a wet cloth to begin cleaning the makeup off.

“Papa, why are you home from work early?” Tatsuya asked as Kagami licked his thumb to get the last smudge of black stripe from beneath Tatsuya’s eyes. Kagami’s heart stopped, and he leaned in to press a kiss to Tatsuya’s slighty-sticky forehead.

“To make sure I was here when you got here, silly. I love you.”

“I m-missed you. It wasn’t the same when Papa’s not there. I... I was scared of the other kids and Ryouta was there to protect me, but you weren’t.”

“I’m sorry, Tatsuya. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ‘kay. You always say work is work, right?”

Kagami set his chin atop Tatsuya’s head and closed his eyes to keep his boy from getting any damper.

\---

“Daddy, I want to go over to Tacchi’s!”

“Ryouta, I said _no!_ ” 

Ryouta let out a long wail, and although Aomine’s back had been turned to the boy as he had stared intently at paperwork that wasn’t getting done, he could sense that the blonde had fled the room. Aomine spun in the chair and raised one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t meant for it to turn out like this. He hadn’t… But he couldn’t… His head throbbed painfully as he remembered exactly why he couldn’t deal with Kagami Taiga.

_”You’ll never know dear, how much I love you…”_

_Aomine sang quietly beneath his breath as he rocked a sleeping toddler in his arms. His limbs ached with exhaustion from dragging Ryouta around a kiddie park all day, and he was glad no one was around to hear him sing, because he certainly was no crooner. Yet and still, his blonde son was passed out in his cradling grip, one hand clenched tightly to his chest while the other was loosely caught in the fabric of Aomine’s shirt. What a day – but a fun one. Aomine would never tire of spending so much time with Ryouta, even if his wife rarely ever joined the two of them._

_Considering how much Aomine fought with her, that was probably for the best._

_The door was unlocked as he pushed it open; it wasn’t terribly late, only nine o’clock or so, but he hadn’t really expected his wife to be home at a time like this. She was usually out eating with friends or doing something else, which she rarely ever shared with him… But that was okay. They weren’t a young, lovey-dovey couple; they were two independents, strung together by one little guy that Aomine wouldn’t trade in for the world, even if he wanted his freedom back from marriage sometimes._

_“Alex?” He called as he flipped the light switch in the foyer. Everything was quiet and still in the house; had she simply forgotten to unlock the door? Humming again beneath his breath, despite the fact that Ryouta slept like a rock, Aomine made his way towards the stairs and up towards the bedroom. It was as he reached the top that he heard the floorboards in the master creak. The master was Alex’s bedroom – it had the better bathroom, really – and Aomine tended to sleep in the guest room, so that must mean that Alex was home. He figured he’d better at least let her know that they’d arrived safe and sound._

_His humming was interrupted by a loud giggle. Weird, Aomine thought to himself, that Alex would be drunk by herself – that was the only tine she laughed in this house, really, or when she found something that Ryouta did particularly funny._

_He heard it then, another giggle, one that was not familiar at all. His hand froze where it had started to reach for the doorknob, and despite the screaming heartstrings of his chest that told him to turn the other way, he turned the knob and pushed the door open._

_The woman’s scream that sounded through the bedroom was not Alex’s._

Flashes of pink and blonde hair danced across his vision, and Aomine swept his hand across the desk angrily, pen clattering to the floor. He swore loudly and slammed his fist where the pen had rest only moments ago, before his right hand went to his left to touch the spot where his wedding band had once been.

_”You have the night to get out of the house, Alex. For good.”_

_Even as he sat in the hotel room he’d purchased for the night, hours having passed since he’d spoken last to Alex, the words echoed in his mind. Would he regret his decision? He had no clue. He was filled with bitterness at the thought of her, however – he couldn’t deal with a woman like that. A woman who wasn’t faithful, who cheated on him, who cheated on him… with a woman. God, they could’ve kept living the life they had, given Ryouta two parents who at least loved him a little bit, just some, but she ruined it. Ruined it with that woman. Anger swelled in him at the thought, fear and fury rising like the tide and threatening to drown him._

_He’d never forgive her. He’d never forgive either of those women. It was unnatural, anyways. It had to be. Things like this didn’t occur naturally. Parents… parents didn’t split over natural things, right? Ryouta could have had to parents who loved him. Aomine would love him enough for both of them, and he’d never… He’d never let a thing like that happen again. It terrified him to his very soul._

_Aomine stood and made his way to the poorly lit bathroom of the hotel, twisting the wedding band on his left ring finger. He sucked in a deep breath and pulled it from his finger, and as he pressed the handle on the toilet, he began to hum, moving back to the single bed where Ryouta lay._

_The dark-skinned male crawled into bed beside him and pulled the blonde toddler close to him._

_“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you…”Ryouta gurgled softly in his sleep, and Aomine smiled weakly, exhaustion creeping into his bones and making his eyelids painfully heavy._

_“So please don’t take my sunshine away…”_

Aomine pulled his hand away from where he had continued to twist at the bare skin of his left ring finger and sighed. His eyes were dry, but he felt like he’d been bogged down with too much water weight to carry as he rose from the chair. Maybe, just maybe, he might convince Ryouta to try and play with ‘Midorimacchi’, instead.

\---

“Daddy, Tacchi won’t talk to me at school anymore. He doesn’t talk to anyone I think, actually.”

“He’s always been a little quiet, Ryouta. I’m sure things are fine.”

The notion that he might be lying to his son sat heavily on his tongue.

\---

“P-papa, no, you can’t leave me! You can’t!” Tatsuya clutched so tightly to Kagami’s leg and he could barely move it beneath the weight of his son.

“Tatsuya, I need to go to work.” Kagami’s voice broke as he spoke, bags sitting heavily beneath his eyes as if he’d been bruised. He was exhausted – he didn’t know how Tatsuya had energy at all, because he’d kept Kagami up all through the night with night terrors that left him paralyzed in bed for thirty seconds, sometimes a full terrifying minute, before he broke down into quiet, desperate cries and clutched to Kagami for dear life. Tatsuya had slept only a little more than Kagami did, and he couldn’t recall closing his eyes for more than a blink from the time he’d tucked Tatsuya to bed to the time he’d risen to take Tatsuya to Riko’s to be watched while he worked.

“You can’t leave me!” Tatsuya’s voice was so desperate that Kagami’s heart felt like it might shatter again, for it already had a million times over the span of the night.

“You like Riko and Kiyoshi and Hyuuga though, ‘Suya. You love when Hyuuga brings you games to play, or when Riko and Kiyoshi take you to the park.”

“But they all leave! Everybody leaves and you can’t, papa, you _can’t!_ ” Tatsuya’s voice had risen to a shrill shriek at this point, and it was his sentiments that Kagami lost the will.

“I’ll call Atsushi and we’ll have a daddy-son day all to ourselves. How’s that sound?”

Teary as it was, Tatsuya’s relieved smile was enough to make dealing with a furious and concerned dessert chef - _”I’m worried about you, Taiga!”_ \- worth it.

\---

“Daddy, Tacchi wasn’t at school today. Are you sure everything is fine because I wanna bring him some soup or something like, ‘member when we were sick and he and his dadd---“

“Ryouta, I don’t want to hear you say another word about Tatsuya or his father in this house.”

“Daddy, Tacchi is my friend and he needs me! His daddy is your friend too and he needs you!”

“We aren’t friends, Ryouta.”

“Are too!”

“We aren’t friends, and that’s final.”

“Well, I wanna be his friend, not yours, because you’re nothing but mean, mean, mean!” 

This time, Aomine’s entire body feels weighed down as he tiredly tells Ryouta to go to his room.

\---

“Mr. Kagami, are you sure you don’t want to see someone to talk to, as well? It’s remarkably helpful to have someone to speak with, and I know things must be hard with Tatsuya’s behavior at home right now.”

“Thank you, Mr. Imayoshi, but I’m coping just fine.”

“If you say so, but please – as a professional – take my opinion in that I would suggest that something about your lifestyle needs to change.”

\---

Aomine had had enough. No matter how much he told Ryouta not to speak about Tatsuya in this house, it still happened; he heard every day that Tatsuya wasn’t there, and it was growing increasingly frequent. If Aomine had been keeping track correctly through Ryouta, Tatsuya hadn’t been to school a single day this week, and Aomine had heard about it every. Single. Day. Ryouta was unsatisfied with his playdates with Midorima, the young boy with the glasses, saying he ‘wasn’t any fun’ and that ‘he didn’t like _Aladdin_ because it wasn’t the right kind of magic’. Ryouta’s behavior in class was getting worse, and taking a phone call from a childhood friend-become-teacher telling you that your kid was acting out wasn’t exactly one you wanted to receive.

He’d had enough of this bullshit. He ignored the guilty, heady whispers in the back of his head that reminded him exactly who had caused this situation as he stood up and went to the door, telling Ryouta that he’d be right back – fortunately, for now, he’d distracted him with television, where some cartoon about mermaids played. It was good enough, as Aomine found himself in front of Kagami’s door, ready to face the redhead for the first time since Halloween – nearly a month ago.

Aomine knocked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the next installment of "love and some verses"! i hope you enjoy it and please feel free to leave a comment, get in touch with me on twitter, or send me a message on tumblr (jaegerl.tumblr.com). have a great day~!!

_”I’ll show you a sight you’ve never seen before, asshole.”_

_Aomine smirked as he leaned across the breakfast bar of Kagami’s kitchen, one eyebrow raised in a silent challenge as Kagami fidgeted with the temperature of the stove burner where the pan rest. With a blazing grin sent over his shoulder, the redhead reached for the crepe batter he’d prepared and poured it into the pan quickly._

_“Amazing.” Aomine commented dryly, even daring to fake a yawn as he scratched the inside of his ear with his pinky._

_“Stop touching your ears in my kitchen. It’s gross.” Kagami replied without missing a beat, before continuing on, “And that’s not the sight, by the way. Anyone can make crepes.”_

_Considering Aomine hadn’t even really had an actual crepe before, he highly doubted that, but he didn’t comment, instead propping his head on his hands and resting his elbows on the countertop. Suddenly, Kagami shifted in front of him, and with a casual flick of his wrist, the crepe went into the air, flipped (not once, but twice, holy shit) and landed back in the pan._

_“Shit!” Aomine swore, glancing to Kagami’s hand where it grasped the handle, and then back up to Kagami, who looked about as smug as a cat that had caught the canary. With a huff, Aomine leaned back in the chair he sat in, crossing his arms across his broad chest._

_“Yeah, yeah, not that impressive.” He lied through his teeth, and Kagami’s voice was mirthful as he responded,_

_“Yeah, yeah, I’d like to see you try.” With a fond shake of his head and a laugh that made Aomine lift his gaze from where it had fallen to the table, Aomine did, indeed, find himself with a sight he’d never seen – for as many times as he’d seen Kagami in the kitchen, he had never looked quite as excited, bright, and, well, happy as he had while he was making those damn crepes._

_The sight of Kagami’s sly grin as he tossed the second one twice as high, eyes glittering, was, indeed, a sight that Aomine hadn’t seen before._

Aomine’s mind had trouble wrapping itself around the realization that it was, indeed, the same man who stood in front of him in the threshold of the apartment. Kagami’s lightly-tanned skin was uncharacteristically pale, almost devoid of color, really; the typical flush that spread across his cheeks as he rushed after Tatsuya or slaved over a hot burner was absent, leaving a strange sallow look to Kagami’s face in comparison. The dark bags, like bruises, beneath his eyes, were nothing compared to the flat tone that Kagami began to speak in, before the hand that was massaging at his closed eyes had even moved enough to let the redhead see exactly who stood at the door.

“Listen, Kiyoshi, for the last tim---“ He began, and then Aomine cleared his throat, causing him to stop abruptly. Kagami’s hand moved so quickly from his face that it surprised Aomine, who took a step back from the doorway just as Kagami took one further back into the apartment. Bloodshot eyes shot open, locking onto Aomine, and he felt as if he had been pinned where he stood by the intensity of the emotion that radiated from the dull gaze.

“You aren’t welcome here.” 

Aomine flinched. He had expected that, of course.

“Hear me out ---“ He’d barely even begun to speak when Kagami’s voice began, venomous and so cold that Aomine felt physically chilled by it. He’d never heard the other speak with such a tone, and being on the receiving end of it – even if he expected it, even if he knew it was coming, even if he shouldn’t care because of exactly what Kagami was, after all – was unnerving.

“I’d rather throw myself off of Mount-Fucking-Everest.” Dramatic, Aomine thought, but…

“Listen, it’s about my son---“ 

“I don’t. Give. A. Shit. Get out of my doorway, now, Aomine.” Aomine paused before his next protesting statement, the ferocity catching him off guard again. Even though Aomine hadn’t interacted much with Kagami, he’d always been civil (or so he figured, civil enough) since… the event. Kagami wasn’t returning the favor, and although it agitated him, he thought of Ryouta next door, and he tried again.

“It’s for Ryouta, you ---“ Once again, his argument was shut off prematurely, this time by a large hand to the center of his chest. Kagami’s fingers, hot (almost unnaturally so) where they rest splayed near his sternum. The tension grew so thick in the air that Aomine could almost taste the regret in coming over, and as Kagami leaned in towards him, Aomine could see the agitated color of his eyes even more, see the tinge of yellow around the blue bags beneath his eyes; he could pick up, even, the coppery scent of blood and strong coffee on Kagami, and it was a strange combination he didn’t have any time to mull over as Kagami began to speak, the longest stream of words exchanged between them yet.

“What do I have to do with Ryouta? Why the _fuck_ should I care about your son when Tatsuya – when Tatsuya…” Kagami’s voice cracked and Aomine took the moment to reach up and slap Kagami’s wrist from his chest where it rest, still lingeringly uncomfortable with Kagami touching him – still reminded of flashes of pink hair and girlish giggles.

“I have enough problems to worry about with my own son, Aomine. Figure out yours on your own.” Kagami seemed as if he’d wanted to say more, but whether it was the crack in his tone, or whatever reason his focus seemed to linger on the way that Aomine had pushed him away, he said only that and then turned back into the townhouse. He reached behind him and shut the door, but Aomine somehow managed to stop him by sticking his bare foot (ow, ow, ow) into the crack between the frame and the door itself to keep it from shutting.

“Leave me alone!” Kagami’s voice growled, but the exhausted that Aomine had seen echoing in his eyes was filtering into his tone once again. If Aomine could hold him long enough, beg long enough, get a chance to explain things, maybe – just maybe – he could end whatever this was between them. Or at least get rid of enough of it to clear the pathway between Tatsuya and Ryouta again.

“Kagami, Ryouta misses Tatsuya. I know Tatsuya must miss him too, right?” Aomine pleaded, hating that he was having to beg to Kagami, to beg to… He inhaled sharply as he thought of Alex, of the distant pleas she had sent his way after the incident. No, Aomine was not like her – he never would be. He pushed that from his head and tried to wedge himself more into the doorway.

“Ryouta says Tatsuya hasn’t been at school, and he misses him, and I’m sure we could set something up mutually…”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you took Ryouta from him in the first place, Aomine. Stop saying Tatsuya’s name like you deserve to have it in your mouth.” With a sharp turn, as Kagami had put his back to Aomine moments ago, Kagami lifted his right foot and brought his heel down with incredible force on the top of Aomine’s foot that was lodged between the door. Aomine yelped, jerking it back, and Kagami reached for the doorknob. Just as he began to push it shut, he gave one last remark.

“Don’t act like you can just waltz back into my damn life, Aomine Daiki, and don’t you dare try it again.”

\---

“Papa?”

Kagami turned away from the door and leaned heavily against the wall where the coatrack was, trying to quell the nausea that had swelled in him. How dare Aomine show up at his door like that? How dare that asshole try and act like they could make things work out between their children without broaching the subject of what had happened between them? Kagami would do anything for Tatsuya, but considering how Aomine’s refusal to let Ryouta see Tatsuya outside of school had only furthered the problems they’d been experiencing… Well, this just didn’t seem to be something he was willing to do.

He took another breath to try and steady his pounding pulse, to fight back the building pressure of the migraine that pushed on the inside of his skull.

“Yes, Tatsu?” Kagami asked quietly, moving towards the couch now that he felt stable enough to do so. Tatsuya turned and peaked at him over the back of the loveseat where he sat, eyes scanning up and down Kagami’s frame as if inspecting for injury.

“Y… y-you aren’t leaving, right?” Tatsuya asked, instead, and Kagami staggered slightly as he collapsed onto the couch. Tatsuya scrambled up from where he sat to come and sit next to his dad on the sofa, tucking his head underneath Kagami’s chin. The redheaded man sunk back into the worn leather of the furniture and shuddered, a spike of what he wanted to call pure hatred (but knew it wasn’t, because as much as he tried, he could never summon up pure hatred when he saw that guy in front of him) moved up his spine.

“Sleepy again?” Kagami asked gently as Tatusya’s breath began to even out across his collarbone, soft gentle puffs that felt like the beginnings of rest blowing across his skin. He felt Tatsuya nod beneath him, and Kagami almost wanted to cry with relief. Tatsuya hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and his nighttime activity was keeping Kagami from sleeping. Together, the two of them had probably not even gotten enough rest for half of what was recommended for Tatsuya in the past couple of days. 

“Want me to put on some music for you, hnn?” Tatsuya’s fists tightened in the fabric of Kagami’s wrinkled shirt in response, and Kagami knew enough to know exactly what that meant. Raising one hand, he stroked the growing bangs of his son’s inky hair, and then pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

“We’ll get through this. I’ll make sure of it.”

Tatsuya didn’t answer this time, and soon – Kagami mumbled reverent thanks beneath his breath when he realized this – the small boy had fallen asleep on him. Tatsuya was a light sleeper, but Kagami figured that the lack of rest in recent times would make his sleep a little bit deeper than usual, so he waited for a couple minutes before moving. He cradled Tatsuya bridal-style in his arms as he brought him upstairs, tucking him gently into Kagami’s own bed. He knew better than to leave Tatsuya alone in his room right now, and besides; Tatsuya had sort of… moved into his room, anyways.

Once his son was properly tucked in, Kagami went downstairs to grab a quick drink. He stopped in front of the fridge, and as he pulled it open and glanced over the contents, his gaze landed on a familiar bottle that had been the subject of his stares for quite a lot of the past few days. The unopened bottle of whiskey called to Kagami, begged to ease the weight of his problems and give him some peace of mind. Kagami wanted to take it. He did. His fingers lingered on the neck of the bottle, skimming the label and shivering as he did so. He wanted so badly to have some, but he thought of Tatsuya by himself, up in that room alone, and…

“Shit.” Kagami mumbled, voice wavering as he let go of the grip that had started to form on the whiskey. It was personal policy not to drink when there was no one around; he knew this, he’d made Aomine follow the same rules. He’d never broken the rule he’d given himself – a single father with no one to watch his kid, drinking alcohol? It was a recipe for disaster, but yet that brief meeting at the door was enough to make him consider picking up the bottle he’d purchased only a few days ago, the guilt of the action settling heavily on his heart.

Aomine. It always came back to that guy, no matter what the other father might have to say about it. Sometimes it felt like this was all still a bad nightmare; that Kagami would wake up the next morning and continue to see things through a rose-colored filter, continue to laugh and cherish his time with the other man. But it wasn’t like that anymore. Kagami flinched as he thought of it, closing the fridge with controlled force and turning to the counter. His fingers ached to clench back around the neck of the whiskey bottle even when he’d left it there, and he could feel his eyes begin to well with tears. God, he hadn’t cried so much in his entire life as much as he had in the past couple of weeks. How did he even have anything left in him to cry? It sounded like bullshit when you read it in novels – that people would feel like they’d cried out all of the water in them – but Kagami had been at that point for ages now. He wasn’t a crier (well, he was a little bit, but only when it came to his son), but yet and still it seemed that his eyes never seemed to get a break from the irritation.

His hands shook, tired and unsteady, as he pulled a glass down from the cabinet. He leaned heavily into the counter and breathed out slowly. It was okay; it was okay. He reassured himself of this, because he’d pulled through things like this before. He could do it again. It would be easier if Aomine didn’t show up at his doorstep again – that had thrown a wrench in Kagami’s hope for recovery, of course – but it wasn’t an insurmountable task. Kagami had never been stopped by any sort of obstacle; he’d had to pause, but he’d always gotten over them. When they’d told him that it would be difficult to adopt a child as a single man, when they’d warned him of the lack of success, he hadn’t balked, not one bit. And his angel was sleeping up in his bed right now, even if… things were rocky now.

The fridge hummed as he pressed the glass to the water dispenser, the only sound besides Kagami’s own soft breathing, heavier than it should have been.

Things were rocky now, he told himself again as he nursed the glass between his hands and began his journey back upstairs to his bedroom, where Tatsuya was (hopefully) still asleep. His feet felt like they were dragging up the stairs, and Kagami practically collapsed into the desk chair when he got back into his room. Fortunately, Tatsuya still rest in the bed, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest a rare but welcome sight. He wished that…. He wished he hadn’t affected Tatsuya so greatly.

Regret, bitter and strong like bile in his mouth, resurfaced. He tried to smother it, tell himself that he couldn’t have known – really, Aomine had been sending all the signs, shit, they’d been so _domestic_ \- but he couldn’t stop the guilt that grew. If he hadn’t tried to see if Aomine was interested, they could’ve continued on in that weird dynamic, and everything would have stayed the same. If Kagami hadn’t been so damn greedy, so focused on his own needs… He should’ve thought that Aomine would react like that. After all, he knew – he _knew_ \- that Aomine had been a married man at one point in his life, a man married to a woman who he obviously had sex. It had probably been too much to think that Aomine was in the least, bisexual – not everyone was like Kagami.

Shit. He hadn’t felt so guilty and troubled over his sexual orientation since his middle school days.

He took a sip of the cold water and opened his eyes to glance back over at Tatsuya. 

“If you had a normal father, maybe you…” _Maybe you would be normal, too._

Kagami hated himself for it as soon as he’d started to say it, even though he’d only finished the last part in his head. Tatsuya was perfectly normal. Sure, he had a few problems, but what kid didn’t? What kid didn’t have problems? But… would they be so exaggerated if thing were different? If Kagami wasn’t a single, working, _gay_ man? Would… Could he have prevented it if he’d just let Tatsuya been adopted by a man and a woman somewhere else? Would they have had the talents to calm Tatsuya’s anxious behaviors, the ability to keep this demons at bay? Kagami knew that he wasn’t succeeding. He obviously wasn’t.

The redhead made a strangled, choking sound. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could change it… If I could change me…” He mumbled the words into the icy surface of the water in his glass and wished, not for the first nor the last time in the sleepless night that would follow, that it were whiskey instead.

\---

Aomine stood outside of the door that had been so unceremoniously closed in his face for what felt like days until he finally found the ability to pick his feet up from where they had been planted on the floor. The trek back to the door of his own townhouse, no matter how short it was, felt like a journey in itself. He… He hadn’t tried to waltz back into Kagami’s life. He needed to sort things out. He needed Tatsuya to make Ryouta happy, and Kagami wasn’t letting him.

Aomine tensed as he opened the door to his home, thinking of the redhead only a wall away. He knew that it wasn’t Kagami’s fault – it was both of theirs, really. Kagami had been… unacceptable. Yeah, that was a good word for what had gone down in Kagami’s living room that night. Unacceptable, hitting on him like that. Aomine wasn’t gay. He couldn’t be – he refused to be. Aomine Daiki was no homosexual. He clenched his jaw as he vehemently denied it in his head; he couldn’t believe that Kagami had even gotten that vibe from him. Aomine had spent the past month pouring over where he’d gone wrong, how he’d allowed _that_ kind of thing to flourish, but he didn’t have an answer . Everything with Kagami had seemed natural; it wasn’t forced, it wasn’t difficult. It was easy to fall into routine with him, to wave him off to work and steal food off of his plate, to smile and talk fondly of their children together. It had been easy. Aomine hadn’t…

He’d never had a relationship that worked like that before – well, friends had, sure, and that was why he had just thought that they were, well, friends. Romantic relationships that Aomine had before had always been hard to maintain, difficult to keep up. In high school, his quickies with girls had always been just that – quickies. All false charm and swagger until he got her to do a little something for him, followed by an awkward week or so period where she thought they were dating and Aomine tried to brush her off. His first really serious relationship had been with Alex, because they’d had to get married for Ryouta – it had been a bit of a leap, obviously, and… It hadn’t been easy.

Everything that he and Alex had done was forced. Forced smiles, forced laughter, forced family outings. There was no casual banter in the living room, no homecooked meals made playfully in the kitchen. Aomine didn’t… it just hadn’t seemed hard. Relationships were hard. They were going out of your way to get flowers even if you didn’t want to, they were trying to maintain appearances, they were an awkward tiptoe around lines that neither party wanted to cross, and even though Aomine had never been dating Kagami, he looked back now and saw signs that you’d see on television of people that were going to be dating soon, if they weren’t already. Aomine hadn’t recognized that when he was there, because not only was it just too damn simple, he _wasn’t gay_.

“Daddy?”

The light that caught Ryouta’s hair as he turned towards Aomine made him sick to his stomach as he thought of Alex’s head between _her_ legs, because the entire time they’d been married – the entire time Aomine had made himself stay tied down for the sake of his little boy, the whole time – his wife had been having an affair. He’d always thought it might be possible; she was never home, never interested in him except for when she was drunk beyond measure. But it had never crossed his mind that she might be having a long-standing affair (he’d always figured a couple one-night stands here and there were more of her ball game, considering how they’d gotten into their mess in the first place), and it had especially never crossed his mind that she would have a gay affair with… With…

“Daddy? Daddy? Daaaaaaaaaddy?”

Aomine startled as he realized that he’d started to space out, and during that time, Ryouta had wandered over to him with big golden eyes wide with concern. 

“Sorry, Ryou – I’m just a little sleepy. How about we go to bed?” He began tersely, and when Ryouta began to pout, Aomine wasn’t in the mood to humor it, “No buts. Go brush your teeth.” 

Ryouta didn’t move, and Aomine could feel his impatience swelling, but he tried to keep it down. He wasn’t the only one having a hard time because Kagami wouldn’t let Tatsuya see Ryouta – no, that wasn’t fair, he knew, but to acknowledge that he was the reason his son was hurting was too much for Aomine to really think about at that exact moment. 

“Daddy, I wanna have a sleepover with Tatsuya.”

“ _NO_!”

The ferocity of his angry yell caught them both off guard, but Ryouta reacted before Aomine could even apologize, tears springing up out of nowhere and lower lip trembling almost immediately. 

“I don’t like you anymore!” He wailed, and then he bolted up the stairs, leaving Aomine standing there stunned with himself and what had just happened in general. He hadn’t meant to yell at Ryouta, but it had just… It had just happened. In that hurt expression, he saw himself reflected, the way that the two of them both scrunched their noses when they tried not to cry. Aomine had never felt so filled with self-loathing as he did in that moment, knowing that he was the cause of those tears, and not only because Ryouta was being a drama queen (which was frequent), but because Aomine was genuinely, genuinely hurting him.

He knew he’d have to go up and see Ryouta in a few moments, but right now, he knew that Ryouta would probably not let him into the room. Aomine swallowed heavily as he realized that he probably didn’t deserve to be let in, considering what he was doing to the both of them. It was only the two of them, after all, and yet and still, Aomine was doing this to him – forcing him to try and make new friends just because he didn’t want Ryouta to be around Tatsuya’s gay father. Gay wasn’t contagious. Aomine knew this, because he was no idiot, but every single time he thought of Kagami now, he thought of Alex and her lover, he thought of the pink-haired girl who’d betrayed him, and he couldn’t help thinking about it. He was a biased, bitter man. He’d seen it a million times before in casework; the way that people held onto grudges would affect the rest of their life, and he’d sworn that he wouldn’t do that, because he didn’t want to affect Ryouta’s life that way.

Yet here he was, with nothing to show for the way he’d acted except for a crying son, a neighbor that hated him, and nothing else worthwhile in sight. 

He tried to distract himself from his thoughts as he gave Ryouta his mandatory five-minute cooldown; tried to tell himself that it was only natural, because he’d been so wronged, that he would feel this way. It was psychology, or something; it was how things worked. Even as he fed himself the excuses, though, he knew that they couldn’t work. Aomine dragged a hand down his face as he tried to pull himself together, tried to assure himself that he had been right in reacting the way he had – a gay man had hit on him, a straight man.

Aomine thought of how his chest had tightened at the sight of Kagami’s physical state at the doorway, and wondered with a dry mouth if he could righteously call himself completely straight right now, no matter how much the thought made him sick, no matter how the hatred he felt for himself grew with it.

Deciding he couldn’t be alone with his thoughts anymore, he made his way to the stairs to Ryouta’s bedroom before the five minutes were up, finding the door to the little boy’s bedroom surprisingly unlocked.

“Ryouta?” He called as he stepped in, only to hear muffled sniffles in response. A small ball was visible underneath the bedcovers, and Aomine cursed beneath his breath as he realized that Ryouta had gone under the covers to cry. That was something he did only when he was really, truly upset – usually, he liked to lay on the covers facing the door, so that Aomine could see him cry.

“Ryou…” Aomine murmured as he pulled the covers back from Ryouta.

“G-go away!” Ryouta’s voice was thick with tears and the wet sniffle that followed made Aomine physically flinch.

Sighing, Aomine lay beside Ryouta beneath the bedcovers, drawing the tear-stained, snot-covered blonde to his chest.

“I’m so sorry, Ryouta. I’ll find a way to make it better, okay?” Aomine didn’t know exactly how he would make it better, because he sure as hell wasn’t allowed to go back over to Kagami’s doorstep… But he didn’t see another way to make Ryouta happy except to get him somehow seeing Tatsuya again. But with Tatsuya’s mysterious lack of attendance at school (which Aomine had meant to ask about, but hadn’t gotten the chance to, obviously), and the impossibility of the two children hanging outside of school, Kagami had no idea how to go about making things right.

Not like it was all his fault, or anything. The guilt he felt was not all because he knew he’d messed it all up. Aomine Daiki was never wrong. 

He held Ryouta a little bit tighter as the boy fell asleep, crying into the fabric of his shirt, and ignored the small voice in the back of his head that told him that he’d fucked everything up, just like he had his marriage.

\---

The next morning, which really started at five a.m. when Tatsuya woke up in tears because he thought “Papa had left him all alone in the house”, Kagami found that he couldn’t watch the show that flickered across the television screen. Every time the mother appeared on screen, his throat tightened, and he looked away.

\---

“Daddy, did you sleep good?”

“Not really, Ryouta, but that’s okay.”

“Can I help?”

“… I don’t deserve you, champ. You know that?”

\---

“You wouldn’t leave me, right, papa?”

“Never, Tatsuya.”

“Because you love me?”

“Because I love you, and I would do anything for you.”

\---

“Anything for you.” Kagami pushed thoughts of the dark-skinned man next door, whom he had only had that encounter with less than a day ago, whom he hated and still yearned for all in one exhausting breath, and shifted the cursor over the next box on the website. His heart pounded as he dropped the box down, hovering over the answer - _gay_ \- and then shifting it back upwards to the choice above. _Bisexual_. He clicked that, and stared at the blatant lie. He could… he could give Tatsuya a normal life with another guy. He could, if he ever found one, right?

He re-opened the drop down box and clicked the option about that one, instead, the nauseous feeling twisting his stomach in notes as the cursor then hovered over the submit button. He….

Kagami exited the browser and slammed the laptop closed with so much force he feared he might have actually messed it up, but he had no motivation to care. He grabbed one of the throw pillows from the couch and pressed his face into it with a muffled scream into the fabric just as the sun began to rise, and prayed that Tatsuya didn’t hear him.

\---

“Tetsuya, I know he isn’t behaving, I don’t know what to do about it----“

“Fix whatever mess you got yourself into.”

“I-I’m not in any mess!”

“We’ve known each other since we were Ryouta’s age. I know when you’re in a mess, and usually, it’s your fault.”

“I’m… it’s not all my fault.”

“I’ll ask Ryouta for the details if this goes on any longer.”

“… I’ll figure something out.”

“Nothing’s going to be fixed if you don’t apologize for whatever you messed up and figure out what to do about it.”

“Tetsuya… shut up! You don’t know anything!”

Aomine slammed the phone shut and ignored the fact that he knew Tetsuya was right.

\---

“Kiyoshi, for the last time, I’m fine! I’m perfectly fine!”

“Kagami… I know you’re not. Just let us help, okay? We just want to help. I know you haven’t been sleeping, Tatsuya told me---“

“He doesn’t know anything!”

“Kagami, I saw the whiskey in the fridge. You were never a drinking man before, were you?”

“I-it’s unopened!”

“Taiga, _please_ , you looked like you hadn’t slept in weeks, you’ve lost weight, you’ve---“

“I’m fine. Why does everyone think I’m not fine? I’m fine! Stop calling me, Kiyoshi!”

“I know you’ve been leaving the whole restaurant to Atsushi. You love that place too much to leave it alone like this – don’t try and tell me that you’re fine, or I’ll come back over there again and not leave, and you know that it’ll be impossible to get Riko out.”

Kiyoshi listened to the sound of Kagami’s heavy breathing in the other end of the line, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick.

“What am I supposed to do? I’ve failed, Kiyoshi – I’ve failed.”

\---

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Ryouta?”

Ryouta moved towards him with a nervous expression, and it was enough to cause Aomine to move his attention away from the paperwork on his desk and fully to his son. Ryouta didn’t look nervous; it wasn’t an expression that the boy usually wore, that is, because he definitely looked quite anxious right now. Setting his pen down, he turned in the chair to face Ryouta, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and a tilt of his head.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, and he watched Ryouta trace a circle with his socked toes in the carpet beneath him.

“I-I know you said not to say anything about it, but Mr. Kuroko said that Tatsuya isn’t at school because he’s home-schooled now.” Ryouta’s voice was quiet, strange for the ever-shouting blonde, but Aomine didn’t want to encourage him to continue on.

“Ryouta,” he began, “That’s none of your business. It’s his father’s decision how to educate Tatsuya. Is that what you were worried about?”

From the way that Ryouta started to play with the hem of his t-shirt, Aomine knew it wasn’t in, so he waited for him to speak again. After a few moments more, Ryouta blurted,

“If Tatsuya is home-schooled does that mean I can go to see him since he’s always at home?” Aomine’s eyes narrowed.

“We’ve talked about this. No, Ryouta.”

“But it would make me happy!” Ryouta was obviously desperate, and Aomine’s heart clenched. His baby wanted a playdate so much, but… Aomine didn’t know how to let him see Tatsuya again, how to deal with Kagami. They weren’t allowed back in his life – Kagami had said that himself – and to be frank, even though Aomine had come to the conclusion after staring at his empty kitchen and thinking over his mistakes, Aomine had no idea how to even try to get back into Kagami’s life, anyways.

“Ryouta, please don’t make me have to say it again.” Aomine spoke before Ryouta could again, and then after a moment, tears began to spill down Ryouta’s cheeks again. Aomine flinched, because he was making his baby cry again, over something he could... He could do something about it. He knew he needed to. He just… hadn’t had the push to figure out what to do yet, that was all. Definitely. Somewhere, he hoped he wouldn’t have to face what he’d done, and that Ryouta would grow out of his obsession with the boy next door, and things would be all fine and dandy.

Obviously, he was wrong, because Ryouta began to shout in his strained little voice at him. 

“Daddy, you’re just like mommy!”

A-Alex? What about Alex? Aomine tensed, hands clutching his knees where they’d moved to rest, a sudden sense of being ill taking him.

“You take happy away, just like she did when she left forever!” 

Aomine felt like he’d been punched in the gut. The air left him in one fell swoop and, had he not been sitting down, his legs probably would have given out beneath him. How did he… How did he respond to that? To think that the very woman he had been trying to avoid being similar to this entire time was the one that his son was comparing him to now? To think that… To think that he was hurting Ryouta so badly by not letting him see Tatsuya that he had fallen to the same level as his ex-wife?

“Daddy, don’t cry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry!”

Aomine hadn’t realized that the tears had started to drip down his face until Ryouta’s small fingers reached out and touched his cheeks where they had started to leave wet trails behind. Aomine took the chance to grab Ryouta’s hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it as the intensity of his emotions made his shoulders shake. 

“You meant it, Ryou, and that’s okay. You meant it because it was true, and I’m going to find a way to fix it.” 

He pressed his face into Ryouta’s blonde hair and let the tears collect there, after he had pulled him up into his lap. Aomine stayed like that until the tears had begun to subside, and despite the length of time it took, to Ryouta’s credit, he hadn’t squirmed or readjusted too much.

“How do I fix it?” Aomine whispered, more to himself than to his son, but Ryouta spoke up anyways.

“You could always bake forgive-me cake?” 

\---

That was exactly how Aomine Daiki found himself standing over the countertop with a cookbook that he’d purchased on the way home, a grocery bag full of ingredients that he’d purchased following the trip to the bookstore, and not an inkling of what he was doing. He had paid attention when Kagami had been cooking, but not really to how he was cooking – mostly just to Kagami himself. The thought made him nervous, but… He was coming to terms with it. Coming to terms with the fact that he might just be, er… _that_ (he was pathetic enough that he couldn’t even say it to himself) was difficult, but he was trying to, because it was obvious.

It may have taken a few months, a scolding from Kagami himself, Tetsuya, and his own son, but Aomine was trying to work to fix it, to try and explain himself. Maybe not the whole thing with Alex, yet, but to at least try and make up for his actions – he could try that. He didn’t have a ton of ideas, but Ryouta had given him one, and Aomine was going to have to go with it. Kagami didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be impressed with fancy or lavish gifts, and so, Aomine was going to back a cake, all by himself.

Ryouta probably would have done it better, to be honest.

Aomine glanced over the recipe once again, the book laying open-faced on the counter and dog-eared on the correct page. He’d already read it multiple times. It was just following a recipe, right? He could do that; he wasn’t an idiot, even though he knew nothing about cooking in the kitchen.

The first part went smoothly as it could; he’d had to pick eggshells out of the mix, but that was a minor thing. How much was he supposed to beat the mixture? Until smooth? He couldn’t get it to be smooth at all; there were lumps in it constantly, and no matter how much he kept mixing it, nothing was changing. Did he bake it like this, or did he try and improve it? What made mix smoother….? Aomine figured that water would help it, so he added a little bit more, and tried again. Nothing, although it looked a little bit better (maybe his imagination).

He decided he should probably not edit the recipe any more considering he had no idea what he was doing, so he poured the batter into the lasagna pan and put it into the oven to set the timer. He could work the oven, at least; he’d made plenty of frozen lasagna, and preheated a ton of food when Kagami had been… When…

“Shit.”

If he was going to keep getting this distracted and confused when he thought of Kagami, he was going to have a problem. Closing the oven door, he moved to junk drawer to pull out the notebook and a pen. He was going to write a note to go with the cake. Ripping a page from the notebook, he folded it in half and set it on the counter, staring at it. Kagami would probably like if he took the edges off, right? He picked it back up to pull at the scraggly ends where he’d pulled it from the spiral until it was clean-edged (except for a little part where he’d ripped into the actual paper, but no one ever did them perfectly, anyways, right? Maybe he shouldn’t try again…)

He folded the paper again to make a little hard, writing Kagami’s name on the front, and then flipping to the inside to write the note. What should he say? He wasn’t good with notes…

\---

Kagami stared at the flat, dull chocolate cake in front of his doorstep, a note with his name labeled on top, and crouched to pick up the paper. He opened it and read:

_Kagami, I’m sorry. I know that I said things that I shouldn’t have, and that it was wrong of me. I know why I did it, but I also know it’s not an excuse. I’m sorry._

_-Aomine_

Kagami stared in disbelief at the note for quite a few minutes. Since when did Aomine Daiki know how to say sorry? Kagami would’ve thought more about the content before he realized how quickly his heart had started to pound. He frowned as his reaction to a couple of sentences on the page, and then shook his head. Apology or not… A cake and a note on poorly lined looseleaf paper weren’t going to help, and the cake probably tasted bad anyways, right? Kagami tried not to think of the amount of time he’d spent in the kitchen that Aomine had been in making this cake today, and instead, he held the note between his clenched hands and tore it. He tore it again. He tore it until it fell over the unfrosted cake like confetti or strange sprinkles, and then he picked up the pan.

He set it outside Aomine’s door, and decided not to ring the doorbell like Aomine had done to get him to the door. Aomine could get the cake when he wanted, because the message was clear.

\---

Aomine held the note, returned whole this time, in one hand as he sat on the couch. His fist crushed the paper, written with another sincere apology, with frustration. Kagami hadn’t acceptable a single dish. Aomine had moved on since the chocolate cake; he’d tried stir-fry, cupcakes, burgers, macaroni and cheese, a milkshake – all of the things that he was striving to make. He’d tasted a few of them and they’d seemed okay, and they looked good, so he knew that Kagami wasn’t ignoring it out of fear of poison. Kagami was ignoring it because he didn’t have to accept it.

That was what hurt the most, Aomine thought. It wasn’t like anyone was forcing Kagami to accept the gifts, and no one ever would. Kagami didn’t have to take what Aomine made him, and that hurt to know that nothing would ever make Kagami take them except himself – that Kagami could ignore him for the rest of eternity, and never take it.

He didn’t like thinking of a life without the potential of ever having Kagami in his kitchen again. Although he’d started to hate himself for the way he felt, he also told himself that it was friendship – he hadn’t had a close friendship like Kagami in such a long time, that was it. It wasn’t romantic, it was friend-based. Aomine would hurt the same if he hurt a friend like this.

“Mr. Kagami didn’t like the milkshake, either?” 

Aomine glanced up as Ryouta walked down the stairs, eyeing the frozen dairy treat on the counter.

“You can have it, bud.” Aomine said quietly, and Ryouta beamed at him as he skipped to the counter and picked it up. The blonde moved over to sit beside him on the couch, scooting in to close the space between them so that Ryouta was leaning heavily into him. 

“Forgive-me food isn’t working, daddy?” Ryouta asked as he took a long pull of the milkshake through the straw. Aomine thought about asking him how he liked it, but considering that Ryouta was a five year old boy, he figured that he would find the milkshake delicious no matter what. Aomine turned his head and pressed a kiss to Ryouta’s head, exhaling and ruffling the longer locks of hair.

“If only I could just send you over, he’d have to tak…e…”

Aomine paused as he realized what he’d just said, and backtracked quickly. Was this an acceptable means? No, probably not, but… Desperate times called for desperate measures. 

Pushing Ryouta’s hair back from his forehead, Aomine forced himself to smile down at his son, and asked,

“How’d you like to go see if Tatsuya can play? I can’t make any promises, but you can go over and ask tomorrow afternoon, okay? I’ll send you with something to bring over, too, and maybe Mr. Kagami will take the food if you bring it.”

Ryouta gave an excited whoop and nearly spilled the milkshake all over the couch.

\---

Kagami really needed to start looking out the door and seeing who was there before he actually opened it.

Holding a bowl of what looked like some sort of pudding dish, Ryouta stood smiling up at him, a note clutched in one hand as he precariously balanced the bowl.

“Hi, Mr. Kagami! Can Tatsuya play? I brought puddin’ from my dad and a note!” Kagami stared at him as he spoke, looking down at the bowl (which was quite messy looking, as well as heavy looking, judging from the way that Ryouta kept adjusting his grip). Really, Aomine? A low blow, making him say no to a kid – it showed how desperate he was, and although some level of Kagami felt flattered, there was still a long stream of frustration. Had he not made himself clear enough? 

“He can’t right now, Ryouta, I’m sorry.” 

“Oh. Here’s the puddin’ then! Can he come over when he can play?”

Kagami felt his right eye twitch as he looked down at the blonde. What was he supposed to say? Fuck Aomine for putting him in this position.

“… I don’t like pudding.” Although that sounded beyond childish, it was the only thing that he could think of, and he felt bad for it as soon as Ryouta pouted back up at him.

“Then you can take the note and I’ll take the puddin’ home and eat it myself!” Ryouta declared dramatically, wiggling the note where it rest in his fingers. Kagami sighed, took it, and then watched as Ryouta strutted back to his own door. That had worked, but Kagami had a feeling that it wouldn’t work every time, and that this wouldn’t be the last time he saw Ryouta.

\---

The next time, Kagami was forced to take the food, too, considering it was vanilla cake, and who actually hated vanilla cake? (And Tatsuya loved it, so… Even if Kagami would taste test it first).

When Ryouta came home empty-handed, Aomine at least felt like he’d won a small victory.

\---

The next time Ryouta went over, Kagami was fully prepared to turn him away again when he heard the quiet, awed voice of his son behind him.

“R-ryouta?” Tatsuya’s quiet stammer started up behind him, and Ryouta smiled so widely that the brightness of the expression seemed to rival the overhead light of the porch overhang. Kagami cursed his luck, but at the same time, as he turned to see his shocked but smiling son, he couldn’t help but feel just a little bit relieved. When was the last time Tatsuya had smiled at someone who wasn’t his dad? 

Kagami whipped back around to the sound of something shattering. Ryouta had dropped the plate he carried and with surprisingly agility and familiar speed, he dashed pass Kagami’s legs to run into the house, throwing his arms around Ryouta.

“Ryouta’s here! I’m here!” He cheered, and Kagami sighed as he turned to pick up the shattered pieces of plate. The note had been dropped, as well, and Kagami stared at it long and hard for a few moments before he opened it again.

_Kagami, I know I suck, a lot. It hasn’t been fair of me to keep sending Ryouta to you, but I don’t… I don’t know what else to do. I’m a desperate man, Kagami Taiga, and I know you’ll never forget, but I’m hoping you might forgive._

The notes had become more eloquent, Kagami thought to himself as he tossed the plate shards into the trash bin. He paused and looked at the note for a few moments this time, instead of just tossing it out straight away, and then turned to go back into the townhouse.

\---

When Ryouta didn’t return at all, Aomine thought he might collapse. It was only a start – a small start – but at least his son was happy. At least… at least Ryouta would be okay. And maybe he’d help Tatsuya out with whatever demons that boy was facing, considering the screaming that Aomine had heard through the wall that separated the townhomes the other day. He didn’t… He had never intended to hurt Tatsuya.

Had he intended to hurt Kagami? He didn’t know. Had he? Of course. He’d hurt everyone. 

He pressed his ear to the wall and thought he could hear the sound of Aladdin playing from Kagami’s television. Aomine put a hand to his eyes and exhaled quietly. 

After that, every time he sent Ryouta over to Tatsuya’s, he was allowed in. He always sent the boy with another note and another food dish, even though Aomine was running out of things he could make (there were certain things that had just not turned out right, and those disasters were more frequent than the successes) and he was starting to have to repeat things again. That, and he wasn’t getting the dishes he gave to Kagami back, so it was… making it a little hard to bake and cook when he had no dishes to put things in.

He bought more.

\---

Even if tonight’s dish – lasagna – wasn’t particularly great (actually, it was kind of shitty and bland, but that was beside the point), Kagami still found himself sitting in the kitchen and eating a serving of it as Ryouta and Tatsuya sat with coloring books in the living room. 

“Ryouta,” Kagami found himself calling before he could stop himself, “Why hasn’t your dad run out of plates to send me things on yet?” Kagami glanced over his shoulder to the pile of (clean) dishes that he’d been putting together, considering he refused to send them home with Ryouta but also refused to let them dirty up his kitchen too much.

“He buys new ones.” Ryouta responded, and Kagami blinked, wide-eyed, but nodded. That made sense.

“Why does he keep making me things?” Kagami asked, slower this time and a little more unsure, and Ryouta glanced up this time from his coloring to look at Kagami from across the room.

“’Cause he’s sorry, duh. He’s making you forgive-me cake. Well, stuff, because he’s making stuff besides cake.” Ryouta said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Kagami nodded slowly, reaching for the coffee in front of him (yes, it was in the evening, but he still needed it – despite the fact that Tatsuya’s night terrors had slowed in frequency since he and Ryouta had begun to hang out again, Kagami’s insomnia had not).

“Is he really, really sorry?” The redhead asked over the lip of his coffee mug, and at this question, Ryouta paused and tapped his chin.

“I guess? He gets sad when I never come home with any notes for him, usually, but then he asks me how my time with Tatsuya was and I tell him it’s great because Tatsuya is great!” Ryouta derailed quickly from the question, turning back to Tatsuya to tell him just how great he really was, and Kagami knew he’d lost him. 

With another contemplative sip of his coffee, he imagined Aomine as Ryouta had just described him; sad, wide-eyed, waiting for Ryouta to walk back in the door with a note or something else that Kagami obviously never sent. He imagined him upset when it didn’t happen, and then quickly changing subjects to ask Ryouta about his time. It sounded… typical, and not typical. Kagami had never seen the dark-skinned male upset.

He hesitated before he opened the door for Ryouta that night.

\---

The next day, Ryouta came over later than he did, and Tatsuya asked him about it in earshot of Kagami. Kagami paused his cooking to listen, feeling a little guilty that he was eavesdropping, but… It was his son and a friend, so he was allowed.

“Ryouta, are you okay?”

“I’m ‘kay, but I don’t know if daddy is?”

Kagami stilled completely at the mention of Aomine, ignored the flutter of anger and something else that he got when he thought about the man who still lived next door.

“Daddy hasn’t been going to work lots lately, and his boss called him and was kinda angry I think. They were yelling and so I could ask if I could come over until he was done.” 

Not going to work? Arguing with his boss? Kagami was his own boss, so taking his own leave to take care of his son and get their lives in order had been okay. Tatsuya was better now – leaps and bounds, really, even though the night terrors still came and the anxiety in public was still there – enough that he might be able to go back to school soon. Kagami had kept in touch with Tatsuya’s teacher to keep him on track with curriculum at home, so the possibility was there. Kagami… he didn’t know when he’d be back into work, but he’d have to go soon. His sporadic hours and dependence on Atsushi were unacceptable, and the food critics had started to notice things.

Aomine was a detective. He was required to be in and out on cases; he was a man who had to be there to get things done, and it wasn’t surprising that his lack of hours had begun to take a toll on him. Although Kagami couldn’t help but wish that Aomine had been able to hide his yelling from Ryouta, he knew that wasn’t exactly easy.

Kagami sighed and stared pensively into the bottle of ibuprofen as he opened it. This needed to stop, and Kagami was only enabling it to go on even longer.

\---

“Ryouta, mind if I walk you home?” 

Ryouta glanced up as he put his shoes on and then smiled broadly. He may not have totally understood what was going on, but considering that Kagami had never asked to accompany him home before, that meant that new things were happening, that things were changing, and that excited Ryouta, even if he didn’t know just what was going to happen.

“Nope!” Ryouta chirruped, and Kagami turned back to Tatsuya. 

“I’ll be right back, okay? Go get into your pajamas.” Kagami told him as he moved into the kitchen to pick up the large pile of plates, pans, and pans where cakes, pasta, and more had once been. Kagami had started off by just dumping them straight out (and some of them he’d tried later been shitty enough to throw them out even after he’d had a bite), but then he’d started eating more of what was sent. Either way, everything was clean, and it was time to bring it back.

Kagami exhaled slowly as he asked Ryouta to open the door for him. Ryouta beamed as he did so and Kagami stepped out with the precariously high stack before realizing this probably wasn’t the smartest decision.

“Hold on, Ryouta.”

He stepped back inside and set the plates back down on the countertop, then found a paper bag to put them into. It took two to fill them, and he prayed the handles didn’t break, but this was better than carrying the large stack from before. He was a chef, not a waiter. 

He came back outside to find Ryouta impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Kagami smiled indulgently at him and then gestured using his head towards the doorway of Ryouta’s own home. Ryouta practically leaped towards it, bounding up the steps and then getting to the door. He looked curiously over his shoulder, unsure of whether or not to go in or wait up for Kagami.

“Go ahead in. Tell your dad someone’s here to see him, okay?”

“Got it!”

The blonde pushed open the door, and Kagami could hear the little boy yell at the top of his lungs as he crossed over the lawn to follow after him. What was he going to say? Kagami probably should have planned the encounter a little more. He probably should have just dropped the bags off and said nothing… But that wasn’t going to solve anything. He didn’t know exactly what to do, really, but should probably work on his game plan. His strategy. ‘I still don’t trust you, and I still can’t believe what you did, but here’s your plates? Let’s try again?’ That sounded foolish and idiotic in his own head. He… He didn’t really forgive Aomine, not yet. Not for the pain and the suffering he’d caused.

But Aomine was genuinely sorry, and Kagami knew how it was to fuck something up, be truly apologetic, and not get recognition for it. He knew how it felt to be on that end of things, so he strove to try and make things right now, no matter how the exhaustion sat heavily in his limbs or how the headache (one of many) built in his temple, there was no going back from it now. He had to go through with it, even if he didn’t’ know what to say.

Even if he’d have planned something to say, he’d have forgotten it the moment that Aomine opened the door the rest of the way and stood in front of him. He wore a baggy t-shirt and shorts that had seen better days, paint-and-bleach splattered, and his hair was mussy with only a few signs of attempts at making it more acceptable to the public. His eyebrows were drawn in with concern, lines deep set between them and his gaze sharp and agitated.

The irritation in them softened as his eyes landed on Kagami, the lines smoothing for a few moments before confusion, something else, and perhaps even a tinge of fear took their place. Kagami didn’t give Aomine a chance to speak before he stuck out the two paper bags.

“Yours. Stop buying more.” He refrained from saying the word ‘idiot’, far too familiar and friendly for the way he felt right now, even as he tried to convince himself to channel those sorts of vibes. Kagami sucked in a deep breath as Aomine took the bags from him while still looking quite shocked, and then turned to set them down behind him. Once he’d done that, he stood back in place, rigid and uncomfortable looking even in his own home. Shit. He really should have prepared a speech.

“Your cooking is shit.” Kagami said before he could catch himself, and Aomine’s eyes widened before they narrowed in a way that was almost commonplace. 

“I’m learning.” Aomine mumbled, defensive sounding even as he crossed his arms over his chest and managed to look vulnerable. Aomine knew that… this was really his last chance. He had to respect if Kagami told him to stop sending things over, had to respect if Kagami told him to get the fuck out of his life and not come back in again – he knew that this was the end-all be-all. He hadn’t expected the other male to insult his cooking, but his heard still pounded with the knowledge of what exactly might be coming his way. He tried not to grow anxious. He was Aomine Daiki, and he could steel his nerves well enough to face a train head on. Okay, maybe not quite, but being a detective – well, he had been one, considering that he had just been fired quite vehemently over the phone, which he still had no idea what he was going to do about – had made sure that he could sort of hold his cool.

If he could ‘sort of hold his cool’, why the hell did he feel like he was going to bust apart at the seams any moment now?

“I’ll… You’re not as hopeless as I thought, though.” Kagami spoke again, and Aomine found that he was unsure of what exactly that meant. He managed to find his words again,

“… And?” 

Kagami drew in a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder where he could see Ryouta peeking around the end of the couch. Damn. He’d probably heard Kagami curse, then. The redhead’s attention moved back to Aomine, and after he let out a long exhale, he spoke again.

“I’ll try to teach you how to cook again, if only so you don’t keep subjecting Ryouta to… That.” He waved a hand towards the bags.

Aomine froze. Had he really just heard what he thought he had heard? Was this… was this really happening? He’d expected to be shot down. Relationships were hard; he knew that. He knew it with all of his heart. For all of the effort he’d put into relationships, though, it wasn’t often he got anything back, but here he was, getting something – at least a little something, even if it was only a remark that might not even happen in the future. 

He hadn’t realized that he had started to quiver where he stood until he raised a hand to brush his messy hair away from his face, and it was shaking. Oh, shit. Shit. What did he do next? What was he supposed to say? Did he offer his hand to shake on it? Did he say thank you? Did he? He was Aomine Daiki, confident, composed, and sure. He was.. He was…

“Out of groceries.” Aomine said before he could really think much of it, mostly under his breath. Kagami blanched in front of him and raised an eyebrow, and Aomine nearly swore. He was messing it up. He was messing things up. Shit, he was screwing himself seven ways to Sunday.

“Grocery store?” He added on, and then he realized that wasn’t even a sentence. Kagami’s raised eyebrows were either amused or scornful and Aomine wasn’t going to give him enough time to say something that might tell Aomine which side he was leaning towards.

“I’m out of groceries. Please go to the grocery store with me!” He felt like Ryouta with the way that his words burst from him before he could say anything, and he felt even more childish when Kagami let out a noise that Aomine really couldn’t identify.

“… Tomorrow.” Kagami replied, and Aomine nodded so quickly that his head ached at the movement.

“… Tomorrow.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Kagami!”

Aomine tried not to notice how the redhead flinched when he called for him as he stepped of the redhead’s living room and towards the kitchen, where Kagami stood – as was typical. He tried not to see the way that his shoulders tensed as he turned to him and furrowed his brows.

“What?” Kagami asked, his tone slightly snippy and sharp – then again, despite the fact that the grocery ‘date’ had happened yesterday, it wasn’t like Aomine had really expected the sharp tones of the other male to fade out of the picture. Aomine had hoped that they would, of course, but even he knew that to expect such a thing was unrealistic in itself; he tried to be as realistic and logical as possible, even though his heart strained to pull ahead of his mind most of the time. The grocery store thing… Well… It had gone okay…

_Once again, Aomine found himself staring at Kagami’s back. Although they had agreed on this together, Aomine felt almost as if he was standing behind Kagami with a gun to his shoulder blades, forcing him onward. Tatsuya and Ryouta skipped ahead together (or, more accurately so, Ryouta skipped and Tatsuya was pulled along by the force of his energetic bounding). Aomine hadn’t expected the awkwardness to melt away; weeks of not speaking to one another certainly wouldn’t be gone with one simple question and one brief date. But… Aomine could hope. He wanted to hope._

_The tense set of Kagami’s jaw as he jerked his head towards the supermarket made that feeling melt away, and Aomine trudged behind him and wondered if it would be more enjoyable to throw himself into the puddles that pooled in the dips of the sidewalk. Silence continued on between them even as Kagami shoved a list towards him and stepped away to head over to the produce section; it continued on for so long that Ryouta and Tatsuya even took notice, Tatsuya’s dark eyes curiously flickering between the pair as they moved without words through the snack aisle._

_When he realized, with a glance to the list, that he had no idea where he was actually supposed to find whatever 'gruyere' was, Aomine knew that he was going to have to say something._

_“Kagami. I have… no idea… where to find… uh, gruyere.” Aomine held up the list, and Kagami glanced over at him._

_“Read the labels.” He said, and then he turned back to browsing the various packages in front of him. Aomine blanched at him, eyebrows furrowing and fingertips tightening around the paper._

_“Seriously, Kagami. What the fuck is gruyere, even?”  
He half-way expected Kagami to cuss him out, with the way his mahogany gaze narrowed and his lips started to curl. But after one glance towards the list and another look to Aomine’s genuinely puzzled and confused face, Kagami burst into laughter. The expression seemed to shift some of the emphasis the tired look that had seemed almost permanent on his face and the soft, exhausted slope to his shoulders as they shook with mirth. Kagami shook his head, grabbed the list, and rolled his eyes._

_“It’s cheese. God, you’re an idiot.”_

_Aomine didn’t know if the remark was playful or genuine, but either way, he managed to strike up a little bit of conversation in the next minute that followed without it feeling too forced._

Although it hadn’t been perfect, it had gone somewhat well, at least. It had made the tanned male feel a little bit more hopeful about the situation, but that hope was suffering now, with every turn. Kagami wasn’t comfortable around him. Aomine had brushed his arm in the kitchen earlier, as Kagami prepared a meal for the four of them to share with the freshly-purchased groceries of yesterday, and Kagami had tensed and taken an entire step back. Aomine wanted to swear, to curse and scream; he hadn’t ever even hit Kagami. He’d never laid a finger on him, but Kagami’s fear of him was still there. His automatic (actually, it was probably more learned than instinctive) mistrust of him was driving Aomine up a literal wall. He didn’t know what he wanted out of the relationship, but he wanted to repair whatever this was at least… somewhat. 

It pissed him off. He’d never tried to save a relationship like this. Sure, when he and Alex realized they’d have to stay together for Ryouta, they’d worked on the relationship – but when it became obvious that they were two halves of a different whole, they stopped trying to make it work. When Aomine’d had girlfriends before her, if there was a single sign of hardship or difficultly, he was out of there. He didn’t know why he wanted this to work. He told himself that it was for Ryouta, but… was it really true? Aomine couldn’t identify any specific reasons. All he knew was that, despite the fact that Kagami was hard to deal with and he… well, there were external influences on what was going on between them, he needed this. Or something like that.

“…. Earth to Aomine.”

Aomine blinked himself back into reality and realized that he’d spaced out. With a sheepish rub of the back of his head – and a painful observance of how Kagami tensed at the sudden movement – he mumbled a half-hearted apology.

“Where’s _Aladdin_ at?” Aomine asked slowly, as it took him a moment to recall exactly what he’d come into the kitchen for in the first place. Kagami paused, and then ran a hand through his hair. 

“I’ll go get it.” He replied, and then he side-stepped Aomine, leaving him standing by the counter alone.

That was another thing, he thought to himself. He wasn’t allowed to be alone with the kids. He… he wasn’t a wild beast. He didn’t think he was. Sure, Kagami could do nothing about him being alone with Ryouta – it was _his son_ , after all, and Aomine would sooner give up this weird thing going on between Kagami and himself than be kept purposefully from his son even once. But when it came to the two of the children together… Anything that involved Tatsuya being alone with Aomine, it wasn’t allowed.

Aomine sank down into the chair at the counter and resisted the urge to put his head back in his hands, which he felt he had been doing nonstop. He’d make it through. He just… he had to earn Kagami’s trust again. Maybe, soon, he’d be able to. It was a process, and he knew that, but he was not great with being patient. As he heard Ryouta animatedly asking Kagami if he’d found the movie in the other room (not only once, not only twice, but three times in a row), he sighed. Lack of patience was a hereditary trait, but for the sake of this – whatever it might be – he was going to have to figure out how to get over that hurdle.

\---

“Tatsuya, when did you run out of index cards? I have to go to work.”

Kagami ran a hand through his hair with frustration, and Tatsuya stood at his feet, playing with the button of his plastic index-card holder box and looking anywhere but at his father. Kagami wasn’t upset with him, but he just wished he’d known about the boy’s lack of supplies sooner than the morning that he needed them for a project at school. Despite the fact that he still wasn’t sleeping well, Kagami was trying to ease himself back into the routine, even if it took a shit ton more coffee than he’d ever had to consume in his entire life. He was finally picking up more shifts up at work, even if Atsushi insisted that he looked like shit every time he showed up on the doorstep of _his own damn restaurant_ /. 

“I’m s-sorry, Papa.” Tatsuya mumbled, and Kagami knelt in front of him, shushing him as he stuck out a slightly shaky hand to smooth down his hair. He couldn’t give him any more negative experiences about school, not when he’d only just convinced Tatsuya to start attending again. Kagami had done a decent enough job keeping him up to speed with the class, with particular thanks to Kuroko’s help, but it was still a big change to head back into school. Kagami wanted to reinforce positivity. After all, that was why he was doing everything, wasn’t it? It had been a week and a half since he’d started speaking with Aomine again, and a couple of days since Tatsuya had begun to go to school again, although Kagami had been walking him to the classroom door every morning.

“Sorry for what, Tacchi?” Ryouta suddenly exclaimed, head poking around the corner of the front door that Kagami had left open. They had been just about to leave when Tatsuya had confessed his need for supplies.

“Index cards…” Tatsuya told Ryouta quietly, and Ryouta grinned, throwing his arms around Tatsuya’s one arm. 

“My daddy and I are leaving early to buy some on the way to school! You wanna come with?” Ryouta asked happily, turning with glittering hopefulness towards Kagami, who still crouched at eye-level. He had just started to shake his head when Aomine stepped onto the porch of the townhouse, interrupting him.

“It’s no problem. I can take the both of them to grab some and then drop them off at school together.”

“No.”

Aomine was taken aback by the intensity of Kagami’s answer, and Kagami felt the familiar flush of embarrassment start to spread up the back of his neck at how he had reacted. He just… he didn’t want Tatsuya alone with Aomine, not right now. But he also didn’t have time to buy some before work, so that left them at a dilemma. Glancing back at the dark-skinned male, he watched his expression begin to transform from shock and surprise, to a look that Kagami could really only describe as… resigned.

The transformation made Kagami almost uncomfortable, the way that his expression darkened leaving Kagami with a bitter taste in his own mouth.

“I’ll pick up some extra and bring them when I drop Ryouta off, then, and that way, you can still drop Tatsuya off yourself.” Aomine responded, but his voice sounded small to Kagami’s ears. Kagami relaxed at the suggestion, and nodded in response after a moment's pause.

“Tatsuya, go get your things together, please.” 

“Ryouta, go get in the car, please.”

The simultaneous instructions gave way to awkward silence between the two men, and it was then that Kagami realized something. 

“Aomine, don’t you have work? I wouldn't want to inconvenience you - do you even have time to stop like this?” At the question, Aomine glanced away, one hand slinking into the pocket of his obviously-not-work jeans. He shrugged his shoulders after a few moments, and then replied,

“Working from home.”

Kagami didn’t get the chance to ask any more, because that echo of a hurt expression had made itself known on Aomine’s features again as the other man turned away to go get into his car. 

\---

Kagami huffed in irritation as he knelt by the couch, trying to get his arm through the crease of the cushions. Of course, he just had to go and drop the remote; Tatsuya and Ryouta were upstairs together, and Aomine was ‘out and about’ (whatever that meant), and Kagami had gone and dropped the remote through the crack of the sofa. As strong as he was, he couldn’t exactly move the couch entirely on his own, and he couldn’t lift it with one arm and feel around for the device with the other. He didn’t think that either Tatsuya or Ryouta’s arms, although both small enough, were long enough to reach and grab the remote from where it had fallen onto the carpet… So in any situation, it was a lose-lose, something that he couldn’t exactly solve on his own, and considering the broken channel buttons on the television…

“ _Sex Sent Me to the ER_?” 

With a startled yell, Kagami jerked his hand out of the couch, feeling the mechanisms for the recliner scrape against his bare forearm. He hissed at the pain that followed the movement, blood already gathering in the shallow welts that it had left. He hadn’t heard Aomine walk in; it was only natural that he was startled like that, considering the fact that he was still a bit tense around the other male. Well, a bit tense might be an understatement. He was… ah, pretty tense around him. 

“Oh, shit, Kagami, let me go grab the first aid kit---“ Kagami didn’t have any time to respond to Aomine’s surprised comment, because the other male was already gone, presumably to go find the first aid kit. It wasn’t that bad of an injury; okay, maybe it was a little bit deep, but it wasn’t like it was horrific, or anything. It was just a pretty large gash, so the droplets of blood that had begun to build up made it look much worse than it was. It was still stinging pretty severely, though, enough that Kagami could feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. God, he could burn his entire hand on a hot plate and not cry, but forbid he get attacked by a couch, or else he might cry. 

Sighing, he stood up to head into the kitchen to go wash off the blood when Aomine came back downstairs, clear plastic container filled with first aid supplies in hand.

“I don’t really need that,” Kagami said bluntly, rolling his eyes as Aomine cracked it open on the counter and pulled out gauze, dressings, and antibacterial ointment. Aomine’s brows furrowed as he tore open the package of ointment with ease (he’d done this many times before, considering the overactive demon that was his own son), and then the tanned male stretched out his right hand towards Kagami.

“What?” Kagami asked stiffly, and Aomine raised an eyebrow at him.

“Gimme your arm so I can patch it up?” Aomine replied slowly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Kagami stared at his open palm, and Aomine wiggled his fingers expectantly. Kagami started to offer his arm to the other, and then he paused, because he thought of – shit, he didn’t know what he thought of, considering that Aomine had never done anything to physically hurt him, but he found himself shaking his head. Aomine hadn’t raised a hand against him, only words, but yet and still...

“I’ll do it myself.” Aomine stared at him for a few moments, the expectant expression on his face crumbling as he did so.

“You’re going to wrap an injury on your dominant arm with your weaker arm, all alone?” Aomine asked with that same slow, almost confused tone, and although Kagami knew it was stupid, he nodded.

The harsh screech of the stool as Aomine pushed it backwards to stand vibrated through the kitchen. 

“I know I did some shit, Kagami, but I’m trying to make up for it. I really am, and if you’re going to act like you’re going to let me do something about it, and then pull this --- I don’t know if I can really handle it.” Aomine said, but before he gave Kagami a chance to response (as if he could, considering that the words had dried up along with the saliva in his mouth as he heard Aomine’s upset, guilt-ridden, and frustrated tone), he left.

Kagami ended up just wiping the cut down, injury dressings left rolled and unused in the box. 

\---

“Papa, are you sick?” 

Kagami glanced down to see Tatsuya at his feet. With a bleary rub of his eyes and a soft sigh, Kagami knelt in the living room, pressing a kiss tenderly to Tatsuya’s forehead.

“I’m having some trouble sleeping, so I’m kind of tired. It’s okay, though, I’m just fine.” He reassured the other with a gentle ruffle of his hair, and Tatsuya fixated him with a long, hard stare after he’d shared the excuse. Sometimes, under the scrutiny of that gaze, Kagami felt like he was going to be completely found out; he’d been burning the candle at both ends, hyper-aware at home and unable to relax at work whenever he left, afraid of what would happen with Tatsuya when he left him at Kiyoshi’s place or school again (Kagami had yet to let Aomine stay with Ryouta and Tatsuya alone, and to be quite frank, he wasn’t exactly sure when that was going to happen). He was just a little on edge, was all.

He seemed to pass Tatsuya’s examination, at least, for the little boy nodded and turned away, heading towards the doorway. He paused, however, and glanced back at his father with a wrinkle of his nose.

“You always smell like coffee. It stinks.” He remarked, leaving Kagami standing there, speechless. Either Ryouta’s more, ah, brash tendencies were rubbing off on Tatsuya, or Kagami really did smell like coffee. He rolled his eyes and stood back up from the position, and then let out a soft noise of surprise as he felt himself go light-headed. He staggered and caught himself on the end table just barely, vision tunneling for a few brief moments. Shit, maybe he needed to be better about getting more sleep. Or, he thought, with a glance to his hands that shook with what was probably caffeine overload, he should just try to cut back on the coffee.

\---

Aomine mumbled quiet reminders to himself as he nudged the door open to his home, arms full of groceries and barely able to unlock the doorknob without letting the bags go. He’d left Ryouta with Kagami and Tatsuya in his townhouse while he headed out, and although he hadn’t expected the house to be completely raucous and loud, he certainly hadn’t expected the silence he got when he entered. As soon as he stepped in, however, he heard the pitter-patter of little socked feet coming down the stairs, and at his legs he then found Ryouta and Tatsuya clinging. 

“Hey, you t---“ He began, and then found himself immediately shushed by Ryouta, who accompanied the warning noise with a sharp tug to Aomine’s jeans.

“Sssh, daddy, Tatsuya’s daddy is sleeping.” That caught Aomine off guard, even as Tatsuya nodded hastily in agreement with Ryouta’s statement. Kagami didn’t usually fall asleep when he was on kid-watch; he was too anal for that, far too concerned about what the children might get into (and rightfully so). But, considering that Kagami looked like he’d been wrung out far too many times lately, the guy needed some sleep.

With a wise nod (and a wink towards Ryouta, because he figured that Ryouta had probably turned this into some sort of sneaking-around-spy-game, knowing his son), he nudged Ryouta and Tatsuya off of his legs and moved into his kitchen, where he placed the groceries on the counter. The receipt toppled out of the top bag, and Aomine grimaced as he saw it, fingers going to his wallet without much thought. He should really be… He stared at the newspaper where he’d left it on the counter earlier, the jobs page inconspicuously dog-eared. With a guy like him – with special skills like he had – he should be looking elsewhere, but as it stood right now, he didn’t exactly know what to do. He was a young detective, newly fired, without a job…

He crumpled the receipt and decided he would do what he’d been doing since his firing two weeks ago, and that was promptly ignoring the problem. He tossed it into the trash bin even as his brain reminded him that the last time he’d ignored a problem, he’d ended up with a crying son and a bitter neighbor, but he was Aomine Daiki, and he could fix any problem. Well, sort of. 

He still hadn’t really managed to forget about it, even after he’d put the groceries away, and even after Kagami had woken up from his nap (which had only lasted about thirty minutes, anyways). The man had seemed even more tired when he woke than when he had fallen asleep, and if Aomine’s comments of worry about his health hadn’t been brushed off so many times before, he might’ve made another. Instead, he just let Kagami go to check on Tatsuya when he awoke, even when Aomine assured him that the dark-haired boy was fine, and he tried to convince himself that things were decent.

God, this was hard. Aomine leaned against the fridge, pressing his hot forehead to the cold metal surface, and sighed heavily. He felt helpless, and there was nothing more that he hated than being a helpless man. Despite the feeling, despite his innate dislike of being a good-for-nothing, he found himself slipping the newspaper into the trash receptacle, and still letting Kagami cook dinner, despite the pallor to his face and the quivering anxiety of his hands and the redhead’s quiet request for Aomine to put another pot of coffee on.

Even if their relationship seemed to be getting better, just a little bit, Kagami was not.

\---

Aomine should’ve seen it coming from a mile away, but he didn’t. If he ever got to the point where he was old and wrinkly and couldn’t remember what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning, he knew that he’d always remember that Saturday morning.

It’d started off like most Saturday mornings did, sitting with Ryouta as the blonde happily chattered about cartoons and his hopeful plans for the weekend and whatever crazy dream that he’d had while he was sleeping. This morning was a little different than most, considering that Aomine was working on his resume – untouched since he had been first employed, which felt like decades ago – and that this Saturday morning, there was the peculiar absence of Tatsuya and Kagami. Typically, Ryouta begged almost as soon as he’d woken to go next door and visit, and Aomine conceded, but today, Ryouta had instead become so absorbed in the show on television (something about dragons and a magic rock, from what Aomine had deduced with his half-assed focus, as most of it was directed towards the computer screen) and in spending ‘daddy time’ with Aomine that he hadn’t asked to go next door, not once.

Ryouta had been in the midst of telling him about how he would also like to visit a magical world with dragons and maybe have a pet dragon – or maybe a pet dog, which Aomine shot down quickly, because considering the long night he’d spent pouring over his bank information, there was no way they could have one of those at the moment – when he’d heard it. It wasn’t anything incredibly suspicious; there was a loud thump, followed by another, like someone had dropped a box and let it tumble down the stairs or something. Aomine couldn’t tell if it was from Kagami’s townhouse next door, or if it was from the one on his other side, but he didn’t think much of it as he clicked back to edit a typo on his resume.

It was what came next that he would never forge. The screaming, the sound of Tatsuya’s terrified voice, would forever be etched into his mind. Aomine shot up from the couch as Ryouta scrambled up, his equally scared and confused remarks almost unnoticed by Aomine. The laptop clattered to the ground, and Aomine left it there as he bolted to the door, still in his pajamas. Ryouta followed after him and Aomine slammed on Kagami’s door, fists pounding and frustration blooming because it was locked, and he had no key. Shit. What was happening? Why was Tatsuya screaming? Oh, gods, he had to get in there. He had to. Ryouta held onto his leg and trembled like a leaf in a hurricane.

“Tatsuya? Tatsuya, can you hear me? Tatsuya?” Aomine called desperately against the wood of the door, wishing with all his might that he could bust it down or that Kagami had trusting him enough to give him a key in return for the one Aomine had given him.

“Tacchi?” Ryouta called tentatively, tender and scared, behind him.

“Tatsuya, please, if it’s your dad, you have to let me in – Tatsuya, please-“ Aomine’s voice strained with the fear in his voice, the sound of Tatsuya’s screaming having died out in Aomine's rush from the couch to the redhead's front door, but the sobs that echoed throughout the house did not go unnoticed. 

“Ryouta, go grab daddy his cellphone, okay baby? Go grab it for me, it’s on the table, I left it there.” Aomine turned to look to Ryouta, who was staring at him with tears tracking down his face, the sense of terror so heavy between the two of them that Aomine felt as if his shoulders were physically struggling under the weight of it. His breathing was coming in quick, hasty inhales; his shoulders quivered and the panic was starting to make his head throb. If Tatsuya didn’t ---

The door suddenly creaked in, throwing Aomine off balance and causing him to almost stumble straight across the threshold. Behind it, Tatsuya stood, sobbing openly with his hands trying frantically to wipe away tears that came far too fast. 

“Tatsuya, I’m going to help, okay?”

By now, despite the emotional roller-coaster Aomine found himself on, training had started to kick in – he’d had to go through it, for dangerous cases, and as he side-stepped Tatsuya only to see Kagami collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, his mind pieced together the pieces. Kagami had fallen down the stairs. That was normal, people did that a lot, but considering that Kagami was not moving ---

He felt the cool surface of something being pressed into his hand, and he glanced down to see Ryouta pushing a cellphone into his hand. Aomine thanked him and then turned to him.

“Ryouta, how about you take Tatsuya and go put on that cartoon you were watching at home? I’m going to call the doctor for Tatsuya’s dad, but everything is okay, okay?” Although Ryouta opened his mouth to argue, Aomine shook his head and it seemed to be enough to silence him. Once they had moved on to the next room, Aomine opened his cellphone and found himself kneeling slowly by Kagami. He felt like he was moving in a cloud, like he had no idea what was going on as he forced himself to dial the emergency number.

_”What’s your emergency?”_

This was the part that went a little fuzzy for Aomine; he didn't really remember the beginning of the conversation. He knew he told them that Kagami had collapsed, that there were children in the house, that he was breathing but not conscious, that there were no visible bruises, but he didn’t exactly remember what he said. There was only one part of the conversation that stood out to him, word for word,

“Has your husband been having health problems prior to that?”

It was only later, as Aomine knelt, doubled over with the emergency contact waiting on the phone as the ambulance came, that Aomine realized something – for the first time, at least with later reflection and realization, he’d thought of being gay and being with Kagami in a romantic way without thinking of Alex.

\---

“Daddy, can I sit on your lap?”

“Sure, Ryouta.”

“Can you stop shaking your leg?”

Aomine glanced down and realized that he was jiggling his right leg so badly that it was shaking the entire chair he sat in. He was not alone in this; all around him, sitting and waiting for loved ones and friends in the hospital, people shook the chairs they sat in and nervously fidgeted with anxiety and impatience. He was not the only one displaying his inability to keep still, emotions displayed with the worry that creased his forehead and knotted his stomach so tightly that it physically ached. He could not cry, not with two boys huddled up in the chair next to him, but his throat constricted as if he were swallowing tears with every breath.

“Sorry.” He apologized breathlessly as he looked towards his son, and he wondered if his apology was to more than just Ryouta.

\---

“--- so he’s just asleep now, and he should be fine with some rest and proper fluids in him, and preferably, less stress in his life. And limited activity until any headaches go away and that's all sorted out.”

Aomine raised a hand to massage at his temples, his right knee aching from where he had continued to wiggle it up and down. He couldn’t help it, even after Ryouta had gotten into his lap – he’d forced the little blonde to sit on his left, just so that he could find some way to exert the extra energy without getting up and pacing. Tatsuya had been off and on crying the entire time, especially since they wouldn’t let Kagami be seen until he was situated – but the good news was that nothing was terrible. For as much as he couldn’t get the image of Kagami crumpled at the bottom of the stairs out of his head, the doctor had told him that there was nothing too bad that had happened.

Exhaling gently, he ran through the list of things that were wrong with Kagami. He had collapsed out of exhaustion and dehydration, which could be remedied with rest and fluids (although they’d hooked him up to an IV), apparently brought on by stress. He’d also been overloaded on caffeine, which the doctor had told Aomine not to let him have any more of – even though Aomine had told them that they were only neighbors, he was the only one there to receive the information about Kagami’s care – and on the tumble down the stairs, he had been bruised up a little bit. The most notable external – was it even that? – damage was, the doctor had said, a hit to the head which might have resulted in a very mild concussion. He had shown slight symptoms, but none major; enough to watch out for, but otherwise, he could be discharged from the hospital as soon as he woke up. However, they suggested that Aomine let Kagami sleep as long as possible.

Aomine felt like he had been awake for days, but even as he rubbed his eyelids, he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. Every glimpse he got of the back of his eyelids brought freshly forward the memory of Kagami at the bottom of those stairs, for as much as he had held himself together, because he knew he couldn’t lose it in front of the kids, he had been irreparably damaged by that view. Every lapse of silence that he experienced in the hospital waiting room, especially as Tatsuya and Ryouta dozed off into a light sleep next to one another, was filled with the sound of Tatsuya’s screams ringing in his ears. Aomine clutched the fabric of the shirt that pulled taut across his chest and ignored the aching of his chest whenever his mind fled back to that image, which had only occurred what – an hour, maybe two hours prior.

He’d just started to find himself returning to the dark guilt he’d felt earlier, about how bad he felt concerning the fact that he hadn’t forced Kagami to do something about his obsessive draining of caffeine or his lack of sleep or his obvious health problems, when someone stopped in front of him. Pulling himself from his thoughts, Aomine tilted his head back to look up. A nurse stood in front of him, holding a clipboard and smiling.

“Mr. Kagami isn’t awake yet, but as he’s just sleeping and our team is done with him, you’re welcome to go see him any time you like.” 

Aomine nodded at the woman and straightened his back, where he had slumped down in the chair and started to feel the deep ache in his tense muscles. 

“Thank you.” He spoke, and then he turned towards the sleeping children in the chair next to him. He could carry them both, probably, but considering how light of a sleeper Tatsuya was, he doubted he’d be able to pick up the dark haired boy. Aomine decided he would try anyways, but as he reached out towards Ryouta to shift him and pick the boy up, Tatsuya’s eyes peeled open. Before he could ask any questions, Aomine spoke up.

“Hey, sleepyhead. We’re gonna go sit with your dad in his room until he wakes up, okay? Is it alright if I pick you up?”

Tatsuya nodded drowsily, and Aomine scooped the two children up into his arms. Tatsuya’s arms slipped around his neck, whereas Ryouta just hung limply against his chest. His muscles quivered with tiredness and tight worry, but otherwise, he felt alright. Decent enough, at least, to reach the room that matched the number that the nurse had given him a few moments before. He nudged the door open, and there Kagami lay; he was no longer attached to anything, although a piece of gauze rest in the crook of his forearm where the fluid feed had been. His chest rose and fell in a regular pattern, the soft puffs of his breath shifting the red pieces of hair that fell into his face.

The sight was comforting, even when Kagami was surrounded by the crisp white of the hospital, and Aomine sunk into the stiff chair at the end of the bed. Ryouta grumbled on his lap and shifted, but remained asleep, while Tatsuya sat there and stared at his father’s form. Aomine flinched. Perhaps he shouldn’t have let the little boy see it.

Leaning forward, he drew him a little bit closer and forced a smile onto his face.

“He’s just taking a nap, Tatsuya. It’ll be fine. How about you head back to sleep? It’s already been a long day.” He tried to reassure the little boy, whose lower lip wobbled uncontrollably. His hands clenched into the fabric of Aomine’s shirt, and he stared up with those glassy eyes. Aomine felt as if he might cave at the sight of them, and even though Tatsuya and Kagami weren’t biologically related, Aomine thought that he could see a little bit of the redhead in that dark gaze.

“I… I don’t think I can sleep again. I’m so scared.” Tatsuya whimpered, and Aomine pulled him in a little tighter. What did he say to a little boy like this? He had already told him that his father was fine, but of course, he doubted Tatsuya would believe that until Kagami was awake and moving about. Ryouta certainly wouldn't have trusted Kagami's words, if the situation had been reversed. Tatsuya looked like he was ready to cry again, however, and if he cried, then he would probably wake Ryouta up, and then they would be in a mess once more. Aomine leaned back into the chair, ignoring his protesting back, and wrapped his arm as comfortingly as he could manage around the shoulders of the boy that rest against his side.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…” He began to sing quietly, his voice low and soft. Tatsuya looked surprised at first, but then his eyes began to slide closed; Aomine continued to sing through the song that he always defaulted back to, and once more, as Tatsuya began to fall asleep in his lap again, he wondered if he was speaking (or in this case, singing) words to more than one person. 

Although Tatsuya had long since fallen asleep, burying his face against Aomine’s chest, the only man awake in the room continued to hum to himself for a long while. It was soothing, to hear his own voice like that, to listen to the breathing of three other people in the room. Ryouta murmured and babbled in his sleep, and Tatsuya was still and silent against him. If only there were a blanket in the room that Aomine might be able to throw over all three of them, although he doubted he could move without disrupting Tatsuya again.

Leaning his head back so that he stared at the ceiling, Aomine’s own eyes began to slide close, even as he continued to hum. He’d just close his eyes for a little while, at least until Kagami woke up, and then he could sleep when he was home…

\---

Kagami awoke with a jerk. The first thing that registered was that everything was bright, far too much so to be his own bedroom – the second thing that he knew was that there was a dull ache in his head, along with the rest of his body, like he had been washed on a rough cycle in the dryer. Not soon after these two things had come to him, he realized that he was in a hospital; or, more accurately, a hospital bed. He was the hospitalized one. Shit. Exactly what had gone down? He strained to think of the last thing he could remember...

_”And what do you want for Saturday morning breakfast?” Kagami rolled over in the bed to face Tatsuya, who lay beside him and giggled. Reaching beneath the boy’s striped shirt, Kagami tickled at his belly with his fingertips and watched the boy’s button nose scrunch as he tried not to laugh. His legs kicked at Kagami’s as he tried to wiggle away, and so Kagami let him._

_“Eggs!” Tatsuya declared with a bright smile, and Kagami found himself chuckling at the exclamation._

_“Just eggs?” He asked teasingly, rolling onto his back, “Just eggs for Tatsuya. Nothing else. No juice, no other foods. Only eggs for Saturday morning breakfast for my boy.”_

_“Paaaaaaapa.” Tatsuya lamented beside him, crawling forward so that he could plop himself down on his father’s chest._

_“Oi! You’re getting too big for that.” Kagami huffed, even though he would probably let Tatsuya sit on his chest even when the boy was sixteen, if that was really what he wanted. Kagami could take it – that, and he didn’t want to think of a day where Tatsuya didn’t want to sit on his chest. Kagami laughed as Tatsuya growled playfully at him, plopping his weight down again with a little movement, and then he paused._

_“Wait, what did you say you wanted again?” Shit, he had… been a little forgetful lately._

_“Eggs! Orange juice! Cake!” Tatsuya declared, and Kagami snorted in response._

_“Eggs and OJ I can do, but cake? Maybe another time, bud.” Tatsuya crowed happily at the concession, anyways, and scrambled out of bed with a happy smile. He was strangely energetic today, and although Kagami didn’t know if he could match the same level, he was happy to see Tatsuya this… well, happy. The dark-haired boy headed for the door, and then turned around._

_“How about you go get the orange juice out of the fridge for me? I’ll be right down.” Kagami asked, and then he sat up in his bed. He ran his tongue, over his lips, dry and chapped, and ignored the dull throb in the back of his head as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He’d managed to sleep some last night, although not a ton, and he felt… Well, not any better for it. He felt sluggish and heavy, but light-headed at the same time, even as a headache throbbed painfully at the base of his skull as if it were a pulsating weight. His feet were like lead as he moved towards the stairs, and he found himself stumbling as his vision began to blur and blacken around the edges._

_“Shit, I must have gotten up too fast.” Kagami mumbled to himself, reached towards the stairs railing and pausing, but his vision continued to darken, and his balance was thrown as he took the next step. He felt his legs give out before he knew much else what was happening, and all that really registered after that was the pain that spread all over him, and the sound of distant shrieking._

Did this mean… Did this mean---

Shit. He’d collapsed. And it was safe to deduce that an ambulance had been called in, considering he didn’t know how else he would’ve ended up in the hospital. But Tatsuya – where was Tatsuya? Kagami shifted urgently into a sitting position, ignoring the ache and throb of his entire body, and before he could throw himself out of bed in a desperate search, his eyes landed on a sight that he hadn’t quite expected. 

At the end of the bed, where the chair was placed, was Aomine. He was slumped in the chair, and covered in two children; Ryouta was halfway off of the chair himself, sprawled over his father’s lap while his head hung over the armrest like a limp ragdoll might. Tatsuya was curled up into a tiny ball, looking small and delicate against Aomine’s large frame, and it was as Kagami’s eyes landed on his son that he saw the tear tracks that stained his cheeks. Kagami’s chest constricted at the sight. He must have terrified him. How had he let it get that bad? He hadn’t… He hadn’t meant to do that, not at all. He knew he’d been in a bad place, health wise, but to the point of collapse? He never would have predicted that.

He realized when the nurse came in to debrief him that, for the first time since he and Aomine had really started speaking again, he hadn’t felt wary of seeing Aomine hold Tatsuya.

\---

“Aomine Daiki, I am not eating whatever _that_ is.” Kagami said with a tone so venomous that he might as well have been spitting swear words. He stared at the plate of food in front of him – shit, was that supposed to be stir fry, or something? – and tried not to vomit. It literally looked like a different mash of vegetables and squishy, overcooked rice, and judging from the color, far too much soy sauce. 

“Ryouta and Tatsuya had some.”

“You probably poisoned them, oh my god ---“

“Hey! They’re fine!”

“This food is not --- mmmph!” Kagami’s protests were cut short by a spoon being unceremoniously shoved into his mouth, piled high with (predictably salty, but otherwise decent flavor-wise, terrible texture-wise) food. Kagami choked it down, and when he could breathe and speak again, he fixated a glare at Aomine where he stood, beaming a smile.

“I’m not an invalid, you know.” Kagami mumbled bitterly, and Aomine shrugged. Kagami tried to ignore the smirk that had grown in intensity on the other man’s face, instead staring down at the food that was in front of him on the bed tray that had been set up for him. He continued to ignore Aomine as the other male whistled on his way out of the room and back down to the kitchen, because ignoring Aomine had really become his forte in the past day.

One day. He had been home for one day, and he had barely been allowed to do a single thing on his own. He got it. He hadn’t taken care of himself, and he had paid the price. But – he had learned his lesson, so he knew he had to change his ways and all of that, but yet and still, Aomine Daiki had practically moved into his house. The guy slept on Kagami’s damn couch last night, despite the fact that he lived right next door, and he’d cooked every single meal that had been eaten by anyone in the house, taken care of the kids, and done everything.

To be honest, Kagami hadn’t really known that Aomine had it in him, but then again, he was starting to realize that after ‘the event', he’d never really given the bluenette a chance, either. He’d shut him up at every turn possible, and although Kagami knew it was justified, he was beginning to feel like he might have dragged it out longer than it needed to be done. Aomine was apologetic, and that much was obvious. For as much as Aomine questioned his abilities, too, the other man was also fairly decent with life skills – then again, he was a single father, so Kagami should’ve known that.

Even if his stir fry was shitty.

Kagami groaned and shifted in the bed, which squeaked beneath him.

“Stay in bed!” came a loud, unyielding voice from downstairs, and Kagami resisted the urge to throw his fork at the door. He wasn’t broken, he was just a little bit… unhealthy. He didn’t need to be in bed, even though Aomine had continuously used the excuse ‘doctor’s orders!’ to keep him there. He didn’t even have much a headache, although he felt groggy still, and the only bodily pain he was in otherwise (except for when he put too much pressure on certain bruises) was the feeling of his overly full stomach, because Aomine kept forcing him to drink more water. And no coffee. Aomine had given him a long scolding about his caffeine addiction, and although Kagami had denied it outwardly, he knew the truth on the inside. His craving for the breakfast-turned-always beverage was out of control, and if it weren’t for the fact that he already had a headache (maybe he had lied a little bit earlier), he would have said he was going to have withdrawals, or something.

He heard Tatsuya’s laughter ring up the hallways, followed by the rich tones of Aomine’s chuckling, and Kagami sighed. Shit. Bad cook or not, Aomine hadn’t exactly done a bad job at being a caretaker.

\---

“Absolutely not!” 

“Absolutely yes!” 

“Oooh, the two daddies are fighting!”

“We are not!”

Aomine and Kagami both turned towards Ryouta, who giggled and tucked himself behind Tatsuya, who stood there in confusion. Aomine watched Kagami roll his eyes before looking back towards him, and Aomine grinned smugly in return. He was going to win this battle, and he knew it. Aomine had been winning all the battles – in fact, his fervent and adamant actions even scared him just a little bit, but he was justified in it. He couldn’t – no, he wouldn’t – ever see Kagami like that again, and if it meant waiting hand and foot on him, then he would do it. If it meant forcing Kagami to stay in bed, if it meant talking to a very angry pastry chef, if it meant cooking meals that he was shitty at anyways, he would do it. And right now, he wasn’t going to budge.

“If I drink any more water, I’ll be sick.”

“Nope. Drink it and then I’ll let you call Atsushi.” 

Kagami let out a long, irritated groan that might’ve even passed for a growl-hiss mix as his fists clenched. If he had any more water, his blood was going to turn into the clear liquid. Humans were 70% water or whatever that number was, but with all of the water that Aomine had been forcing him to drink (“you collapsed partially because of dehydration!” he said) he wouldn’t be surprised if he was 98% water, 1% angry redhead, and 1% sulk. He didn’t think he could have any more water without his stomach making that weird, agitated sloshing sound when he stepped. His stomach was turning into a fucking lake or something with all of the spring water he’d chugged in the past two days under Aomine’s discretion.

But, in Aomine’s fingers was Kagami’s cellphone, where Atsushi’s number was tucked into the contacts, and the other male wouldn’t hand it over. Kagami needed to talk to his colleague for work, even if he hadn’t gone in (shit, he was such a bad business manager), and if he didn’t get that phone…

Kagami swore under his breath and stuck his hand out with obvious agitation. Aomine threw his head back, laughed, and then placed the plastic bottle in Kagami’s hand proudly. The chef refused to look at him over the span of the next seven minutes as he drank the contents, but at least the cellphone was handed over when the bottle was emptied.

\---

“Mr. Aomine?”

Kagami paused on the stairs as he heard Tatsuya speak up, voice questioning as he addressed Aomine. Although Kagami couldn’t see it, he could certainly listen, and he could hear Aomine hum questioningly in response.

“Could you help me with my homework some, too? Ryouta says you’re good at helping.” Kagami could picture Tatsuya holding out his notebook as he asked for help, head tilted as he does so, and Kagami was ready to book it down the rest of the steps to help Tatsuya himself when something made him pause. Interest in what Aomine will do? Trust, maybe? He wasn't entirely sure, because then he heard Aomine agree.

“Of course. How about you show me what you don’t understand?” 

Kagami sank into a sitting position and listened to Aomine help Tatsuya through the rest of his worksheet without saying a word, and he wondered when he started feeling okay with Aomine spending time alone with Tatsuya again. 

\---

Kagami stood in front of the coffee pot for about, say, ten minutes before he realized that it wasn’t working, and it took him another five to realize that it was because it was unplugged.

“Aomine!” He shouted, resisting the urge to stomp his foot like Ryouta had when he threw that tantrum a while back, and in a few moments, Aomine was standing by the kitchen.

“Something wrong?” He asked, and although his voice was concerned, the underlying tones of humor let Kagami know that the bastard already knew what he had done. Whipping around and holding up the cord, which was obviously not plugged into the wall, Kagami’s eyes narrowed.

“You know what you did.”

“Someone’s grumpy. Sure you've had enough sleep?”

“I’ve had more sleep in the past few days than I’ve had in months. I’m fine, trust me. Now tell me why you unplugged my coffee pot!” Aomine stepped towards Kagami with a dry chuckle, and he pulled the cord out of Kagami’s hands with a snuffing sound that sounded suspiciously like poorly hidden laughter. Aomine set it down on the counter and then turned to face Kagami again with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You don’t need it. Try like, a banana or something, one of those foods that’s supposed to be energizing in the morning. No more coffee for you for a while, yeah?”

Kagami’s protests dried in his mouth as he watched genuine flashes of concern cross over Aomine’s face, and although it irritated him and his face was red with that emotion, Kagami conceded with a quiet ‘fine, whatever!’ and left Aomine standing by himself next to the useless coffee pot.

Aomine glanced down to the cord, and realized that, as he often did with small victories, he had once again not recognized one until it had already passed. This time, as he had pulled the plug from Kagami’s hands and stepped towards him with decent enough speed, Kagami had not flinched away. In fact, Kagami had been… better around him. Things were getting better.

If this was what it felt like to reap the rewards of difficult work, then maybe relationships were worth being hard.

\---

“What was that about?” Aomine asked as Kagami set the phone down and plopped down onto the couch beside him. Kagami paused for a second, and then looked over to Aomine with the faint traces of a smile on his features. The sound of Ryouta and Tatsuya playing in the background was a comforting accompaniment, Ryouta’s ‘vroom vroom’ sounds and Tatsuya’s quiet ‘whrrrrr whrrrr’ sounds the only betrayal of the fact that they had been playing with toy trucks for the past two hours (without stopping). 

“Ah, I set up an interview with a journalist about the restaurant. It’s good, considering how little publicity stuff I’ve done for the place recently.” Kagami told him, and Aomine nodded. It was great that Kagami was getting back into the groove, really.

“Shouldn’t they be calling Atsushi, considering how much work you’ve _actually_ done at --- ouch!” He cut off as Kagami reached over and punched him in the bicep. Aomine spluttered his indignation and rubbed at the spot, the silence between them staying for only a few moments until Aomine spoke up and tried again.

“Things are good, aren’t they?” Aomine asked slowly, and it was like the change in the mood was palpable between them. After more quiet had passed, Kagami leaned back into the couch, and kicked his feet up onto the ottoman. His gaze drifted towards the ceiling, and he slipped his hands behind his head, where he locked his fingers together. He listened to Tatsuya pretend to be a police car in the next room over, and he glanced towards Aomine, who still held the spot he had punched only moments before with the opposite hand, and then he focused on the ceiling again.

“Yeah. I guess things are good.” He replied, and he let his eyes flutter shut, “In fact, I’d even venture to say they’re pretty good.” 

If he’d opened his eyes, he might have caught the ghost of a smile that spread across Aomine’s features.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there you have it - the next installment of lasv! i hope you enjoyed it. i had some trouble getting through this chapter, and i know it's a little shorter than the others, but i hope that the content made up for it. i may be out of town next weekend, as a warning, so the next chapter may come on a delay!
> 
> please feel free to leave comments, or to contact me on twitter (@niceassahi) or tumblr (jaegerl.tumblr.com). thanks so much for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoy this chapter! sorry for the late post - things are getting hectic over here. i graduate in a week and a half, so i'm sorry to say you might have to expect a delay from me again.

“Daddy, whatcha lookin’ at?”

Aomine glanced up from the website in front of him, eyes widening as Ryouta leaned in precariously close to him, noses touching with their proximity. Aomine sighed and reached out, giving a playful tug to Ryouta’s ear. 

“Just some boring adult stuff.” Aomine replied gruffly, and before he could pull his fingers away from Ryouta’s earlobe, the little blond reached up to clasp his own small hands over his father’s one larger one. Aomine blinked in surprise, but before he had the chance to ask exactly what Ryouta wanted, the boy energetically exclaimed it for him.

“Daddy, I want to pierce my ears!” 

That was certainly not what he’d been expecting. Aomine felt his mouth drop open slightly, Ryouta’s resounding giggle a sign that even he had noticed, and tried to process exactly what he’d heard. His son wanted his ears pierced? He didn’t know where he’d gotten that idea, but certainly that would just mark him as _flamboyant_ or some--- Aomine stopped himself right there with a sharp inhale. He had to pause, had to remind himself that it didn’t matter. That earrings had nothing to do with it, that there wasn’t any problem with it – he thought of the man next door to him and the strange, weird relationship they had going, and reassured himself that it was fine if Ryouta wanted to get his ears pierced, really. Little boys could do things like that, and wasn’t it fashionable nowadays? But still…

Aomine swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and leaned in to bite teasingly at the tip of Ryouta’s nose.

“Maybe when you’re older, bud.” He tried to tell himself it wasn’t because of the negative connotations he had with it, because of the ideas he still harbored even when he didn’t want to. His gaze flickered back to the computer briefly, and then he reached out towards a now-pouting Ryouta and brought him to his chest, pressing his hand against his golden hair and ruffling it aggressively. 

“How about we go play some basketball at the courts?”

Ryouta screeched and sprinted up to his bedroom to get his basketball shoes, and Aomine let out a sigh of relief knowing that he had avoided the piercing topic, and its hidden undercurrents – for now, at least.

\----

“And how is your father doing, Tatsuya?” Imayoshi tapped the back of his pen softly against the keyboard on his lap, glancing towards the dark-haired boy on the couch in front of him. Perhaps it was a bit unorthodox to ask such a young boy about his father when said man had said he had to step outside to take a phone call, but then again, Imayoshi had never believed in being an unyielding follower of most social norms. Leaning forward to set his elbow on the armrest of the chair, he watched the gears of Tatsuya’s brain turn.

“Papa is…” Tatsuya began slowly, playing with his fingers where they lay in his lap, “I think he seems better. Mr. Aomine took care of him for a while, and stuff, but…” The little boy’s voice drifted off, and Imayoshi knew he wasn’t getting the whole story here.

“Tatsuya, you know you can trust me, and I can tell that something is worrying you.” Imayoshi murmured, voice gentle and low, because Tatsuya didn’t respond well to pressure or volume (a miracle, considering that whirlwind friend that Tatsuya had been talking to him about once again, seemingly connected to his recovery after the psychological damage that had taken place over the course of the past couple of months, really). 

“I think papa needs recess.” Tatsuya confessed unsurely, picking at frayed spot of his jean pocket, and looking demurely back at Imayoshi from beneath his eyelashes. 

“Recess, hmm?” Imayoshi hummed, tapping the pen against his lip and leaning back a little bit, “I might be able to help with that, Tatsuya.” After all, patient-therapist confidentiality didn’t exactly apply when your patient was so young. And, considering how the redheaded man came back into the office with a deep crease between his brows and a heavy sigh, Imayoshi figured that there was no harm in a little play.

\---

“Aomine, is something up?” Kagami asked, and watched as Aomine’s head jerked up from where he had been doubled over the dining table, plastic-y inserts from the newspaper spread out across the table. He couldn’t help but notice the way that Aomine ran a hand anxiously through his hair at the question, looking away before he actually met Kagami’s gaze, like he was preparing something in his head. Kagami tensed. Was something wrong – was it with him? Was Kagami looking for new places to move, was he---

“Yeah, I’m just, uh, cutting coupons.” The dark-skinned male replied lamely, and Kagami was taken aback by that answer, certainly not expecting that to be what the other male had said. Since when did Aomine Daiki cut coupons out of the newspaper? Kagami pulled a chair back at the table and plopped down in it, staring at the inserts and confirming that they were, indeed, coupons for various items; of course, there was a pile of things that Kagami figured Aomine had sorted out as not needing – cat litter and diapers among the assorted rejects – but everything else from food to laundry detergent was being piled up and somewhat organized, even if Aomine’s attempts were pitiful. 

“… Since when do you cut coupons?” Kagami found himself asking, and Aomine’s hands stuttered where they had been cutting at the thin paper, the scissors freezing midway. Kagami himself had never had to do such a thing, except for when he was a poor college kid; even with his poor attentiveness towards his restaurant for such a long span of time earlier in the year, it had continued to flourish and profit as it always did, so money wasn’t really tight around in the Kagami household. On the other hand, he had noticed a distinct lack of takeout being delivered to Aomine’s house recently, but then again, with Kagami cooking for him…

“I just figured since, uh, Ryouta has been asking for a lot of things recently, I should save some money where I could, maybe get like… a kitten for him and Tatsuya…” Kagami paused, and he couldn’t help but feel a roll of brief jealousy. Of course, it always came back to the kids. Sometimes, he felt like the entire thing they had – whatever this was that had Kagami sitting at Aomine’s dining table while the other man mundanely cut out coupons – was about the kids. Kagami grew upset with himself for the bitter nature of the thought as soon as he’d had it, considering that being a parent was all about your kid, and he had to take a deep breath to settle himself.

“If you ever need money for something, just ask.” Kagami mumbled in response, in hopes that such a reassurance would soothe the tense nature of Aomine’s jaw, but it had just the opposite effect as Aomine’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t need your charity.” He spat, and Kagami’s eyes widened, opening his mouth to protest. Kagami raised his hands up in a show of mercy as Aomine turned the scissors towards him in an aggressive manner, reminding him of the time that another customer with red hair had been sitting in Kagami’s restaurant with a pair of scissors in hand as he argued with a blonde man. What had his name been, again…? Not that it mattered, really, and Kagami had no more time to think about it as Aomine spoke up again.

“I am perfectly fine, and you don’t need to worry about me,” Aomine’s voice was resolute as he punctuated particular words with a jab of the scissors in Kagami’s general direct, “and if you offer charity to me again from your hard-earned money, I’ll break your fucking ankles.” 

Kagami nodded slowly, and let out a long breath of relief as Aomine put the scissors down. Aomine had been stressed recently, Kagami had noticed, but he hadn’t been on the blunt end of Aomine’s stress-induced frustration until just now. Without another word, Kagami stood and went into the kitchen, coming back with another pair of scissors. He sat back down, ignoring Aomine’s puzzled glances, and got to work at cutting up the other insert in silence.

\---

“So you’ve done it?”

“All taken care of!”

“And everything is set up perfectly?”

“You got it!”

Imayoshi wished the other male goodbye, and once he’d ended the phone call, he slid his phone away. As he passed a mirror, he realized that he was smirking and positively amused. Well, he should be, all considering. He had the right.

\---

“Are you finally finished with that infernal plan?”

Kiyoshi glanced towards Hyuuga where he lay by Riko, who was asleep on his shoulder, out like a light for the past twenty minutes after a rather exhausting romp together. Kiyoshi laughed to himself, knowing how much Hyuuga would complain if he knew that Kiyoshi called their sex sessions ‘romps’ in his head. Setting the phone on the nightstand, Kiyoshi lay beside the male and reached to his glasses, pulling them off with a chuckle.

“It’s not infernal. Even Riko thought it was a good idea, babe.”

Hyuuga stiffened, eyes narrowing as he turned towards Kiyoshi, ready to protest, but silenced by a gentle kiss from Kiyoshi. 

“Kiy---“ He started to speak immediately, as soon as the other male’s lips were off of him, and Kiyoshi shushed him with another loose chuckle before he reached over to turn off the lamp. As the room turned dark and Kiyoshi pulled Hyuuga tightly to him, he couldn’t help but smile a wider. Everything was perfectly in place, and not only in his bed. 

\---

 

“PAPA! BE CAREFUL!”

Kagami froze mid-step as Tatsuya screamed for him, sounding absolutely terrified from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. His chest tightened uncomfortably as he looked down to the boy, who was clenching the fabric of his shirt anxiously in hand and staring at Kagami like he might fall again at any moment. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but considering what had occurred so recently on the stairs… Kagami didn’t expect the boy to get over it until he realized that Kagami was safe on the stairs again, and how long that would take, he had no clue. 

“I’m okay, champ, I’m okay. Hey, look, I’ll even sit down and go down on my butt. How’s that?” Kagami lowered himself until he was sitting on the stairs, and he took one scoot down the stairs, thinking that would probably be alright. Instead, he heard Tatsuya whimper, and he looked down to see the boy still near tears, eyes glossy and lower lip trembling noticeably enough for Kagami to see it all the way from where he sat. 

“Okay, Tatsuya. How can I make you feel better about how I’m going down the stairs?” The redhead asked gently, looking expectantly towards Tatsuya. Tatsuya hesitated for a few moments, and then sprinted up the stairs on his hands and knees. When he reached his father, he sat down as close as humanly possible next to him, and then took his hand.

“Now is good.” Tatsuya whispered, and Kagami nodded sagely.

“Of course, ‘Suya.” He replied affectionately, giving the small hand in his a squeeze before the pair of them scooted the rest of the way down the stairs. Tatsuya was perfectly content to run off to the kitchen for a glass of apple juice once the bottom had been reached, leaving Kagami there to rub at his butt, which ached slightly from the modified activity. He and Tatsuya needed a break from those stairs, really, it seemed. Maybe he’d set up something fun to do to go down them… Because if Tatsuya couldn’t get over it soon, it looked like Kagami was going to have to invest in some plusher carpet, and maybe a pair of padded pants.

\---

As he threw the door to the townhouse open, Aomine thanked his lucky stars that Kagami had taken Ryouta and Tatsuya to the park earlier that day. Of course, Aomine had told him that he couldn’t be there because it was work-related, which wasn’t a total lie. Aomine was looking for work. He was trying. This was the third interview he’d managed to snag, and the third one that he knew he hadn’t landed almost as soon as he’d walked out of the building. It wasn’t like he was a huge catch of an employee. He was a young father, single and looking more like he’d be on the other end of the case than working it. It didn’t help that he’d been fired from his last job, and not because of overabundance of employees – but for inattentiveness, absences, and a few other things which didn’t exactly sound great on paper.

To put it short, Aomine was jobless, hopeless, and as time passed, fundless.

Throwing his briefcase – why the fuck did he even need one, with the way that things were going? He might as well be bussing tables, with all that his experience and education was getting him right now – on the couch, Aomine sank into the cushions and reached for his tie, undoing the knot with shaking fingers. He could just line up another interview, right? His mouth was dry with the idea of doing it, because he knew that he wouldn’t find anything that put his skills to use any time soon. He could… Where else could he apply? The police station? Detective work probably counted as some sort of experience, even though he’d never been through formal academy training like a majority of police officers had. 

He heard the mail slot at the front door squeak as it opened, and dread built in Aomine’s stomach as he pulled his tie off. He shrugged off the rest of his suit jacket and moved to the front door, picking up the envelopes that had fallen there. Bills and junk mail. Aomine’s hands shook even more intensely as he threw the junk mail on the kitchen counter, stumbling back to the couch with vision that was starting to blur with hot, frustrated tears.

His heart fell to his feet as he pulled the electric bill out, and the envelope began to crease in the tight grip he held it in. He… He didn’t know if he’d have the money to pay this, and for groceries, without going into savings. He couldn’t get a fucking job, and his stubborn pride wouldn’t let him apply to ones that he’d always told him he’d never have to work – retail, fast food, jobs that society expected a single dad to have. He couldn’t provide for Ryouta, and if he didn’t pay, the electricity would be shut off. The case was the same with the water bill, droplets of salty tears falling onto the crisp paper as he unfolded, refolded, unfolded, refolded the paper. Anxiety coursed through him as he bounced his right leg, setting the papers back down and putting his face into his hands. He was a failure.

He’d failed Ryouta. Hc couldn’t provide for him. If he couldn’t provide for Ryouta – the custody – the social services – Aomine felt the panic creep up his throat like rising water, and all of a sudden he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t handle it, if Ryouta had to go somewhere else he would never – He would never forgive himself and –

The familiar buzzing of his cellphone from where it rest in his briefcase shook him from the spiral of thoughts he’d had, and Aomine dragged himself to his feet with a pounding heart and lashes heavy with tears. It would be fine. He could be fine. He’d just have to try harder. He’d cut more coupons, he’d cut a few more expenses, maybe sell off some of his own clothes, be more careful about the money he spent – his fingers, unsure, fumbled for his phone and he pulled it out. The screen flashed. Kagami had texted him; the redhead’s name, accompanied with a few smilies that had been gratuitously added by Ryouta, popped up on the screen as Aomine opened the text.

_To: Aomine  
From: Kagami_

_Seems like these two’ll never want to leave. You off work yet?_

_To: Kagami  
From: Aomine_

_typical – losers just like their dads. yeah I’m home just got here_

_To: Aomine  
From: Kagami_

_Good day?_

_To: Kagami  
From: Aomine_

_Yeah everything’s fine. I’ll shower and if ur still there I’ll come to the park 2_

Aomine placed his phone on the countertop next to the bag, and when he was in the shower, he pressed his forehead to the cool tile and tried to pretend that everything was, indeed, fine.

\---

 

“You did _what_?” Kagami practically growled at the man on the other side of the threshold, his gaze dark and his hand tense on the doorframe. His grip was so tight that his knuckles were white with the pressure, the other hand running through his hair and causing already-messy hair to stick up every which way. He couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t---

“Come on! You act like I just signed your will for you, or something. It’s a _vacation_ , because you’ve forgotten how to take a proper one!” Kiyoshi protested, although he sounded sheepish as he did so – even with a smile on his face. Nudging Kagami backwards a little, he stepped into the other’s townhouse, quiet during midday as Tatsuya was at school.

“I booked it for two nights – tonight, and Saturday night. You come home late Sunday, Tatsuya goes back to school, no harm done!” Kiyoshi chattered eagerly, even as Kagami slammed the door roughly behind him, enough that Kiyoshi imagined he could feel the vibrations at his feet.

“No harm done, as I have to tell Atsushi – at a pin drop notice – that I’ve decided to take a weekend vacation? The busiest time of the whole week, because I, as you might remember, run a _restauraunt_?” Kagami seethed and spat the words as if they might hold poison, knowing that he really had no right to be angry – he should be flattered – but he didn’t like being caught off guard. He liked to take challenges head on, but he wanted to be the one facing the opponent, not the other way around. Being told he was supposed to pack up and leave for a vacation in (a quick peek at the clock) five hours, give or take a little bit, was not in his normal headstrong plans.

“I already called him and got it sorted out!” Kiyoshi declared with a cheery, proud tone to his voice, opening Kagami’s fridge without permission and reaching for a bottle of water.

“You --- you what?” Kagami was caught unaware once again, because although his second in command could be childish and strange, he certainly was no pushover, and he also had a pretty intense (at least for him) dislike for Kiyoshi. 

“I called up that guy he’s been seeing, met up with him, explained the situation a little, and he called and explained and got your little – well, big – chef friend on our side!” Kagami started in slight awe at how well Kiyoshi had planned this out, forgetting that sometimes, the older male was much more intelligent than he seemed. But… wait a second, that aside…

“Wait, Atsushi’s been seeing someone?” Kagami asked slowly, realizing suddenly how very little attention he’d been giving to the man he called one of his closest colleagues. He hadn’t even noticed that Atsushi had begun to see someone (let alone a man, considering that Atsushi was terribly unpredictable and had a tendency of doing whatever he pleased) , let alone that it had become serious enough for Atsushi to listen to that special someone.

Kiyoshi arched an eyebrow at him, and Kagami could practically feel the disappointment radiating off of the other man.

“Yeah, I met him! Bright blue hair, about this tall, real quiet and the kinda guy you’d lose in a crowd…” Kiyoshi didn’t even have to continue to describe this mystery person, because Kagami had already put his face in his hands, moaning gently in despair.

“ _Atsushi is seeing my son’s teacher._ ” 

He ignored Kiyoshi’s laughter as he sank into a chair, sagging like a deflated balloon. 

“Well, that would explain while he was so on board once I explained what was going on!” Kiyoshi replied, chipper as he took a swig of water, chuckling even further as he noticed the red tinge to Kagami’s face.

“As if he didn’t think I was enough of an idiot already…” Kagami lamented, and Kiyoshi decided it would probably be best if he waited for Kagami to stop steaming out the ears before he pestered him some more about the vacation.

\---

“--- And so that’s about it.” Kagami finished with a cross of his arms, leaning back on Aomine’s couch and looking over to Aomine, who was absentmindedly tapping away at his laptop. He was working from home again – which he had been doing a lot lately, not that Kagami would complain much – and thus, Kagami had been able to come over and tell him about the crazy scheme that Kiyoshi had concocted, seemingly all on his own (although Kagami figured that he’d had some help from Hyuuga and Riko, considering they would never miss out on such an opportunity). Once Kiyoshi had left, Kagami had even called Atsushi, first off apologizing for not noticing important things, and then asking if Atsushi had really agreed for him to take the weekend off. 

“Of course, Kaga-chin.” Atsushi had responded, and then hung up with all of the social grace that he usually had. So, there had gone Kagami’s excuse – after all, Kiyoshi had apparently gotten the vacation house through a family friend of Riko’s, so it was free of charge and they’d even been squeezed into a priority house of the many that the man owned. It was a picturesque place, a good way to get away from the weekend, and not so far that they’d have to pay for airfare or drive overnight. All in all, it was a perfectly planned surprise vacation, and as Kiyoshi had left, he’d hinted that Kagami should take someone along with him – and not just Tatsuya.

That was exactly how he found himself in Aomine’s apartment, explaining the situation to him. Aomine had nodded along the entire time he spoke, but whether or not he was actually listening… Well, that remained to be seen, considering that the dark-skinned male had yet to reply to any of Kagami’s promptings, seemingly focused on his computer. Did he have a Bluetooth in his ear that he hadn’t noticed, or something? He opened his mouth to ask just as Aomine reached forward and closed his laptop, causing Aomine to pause. Dark eyes looked to him, skeptical but interested, and Kagami felt a flicker of excitement about this trip of the first time since Kiyoshi had told him about it.

“A mountain cabin, you say?” Aomine asked languidly, deciding that perhaps he could ignore piling bills and job searches for just a couple of days. And judging by the way that Kagami smiled at him, he decided that it was perhaps – no, definitely – worth it.

\---

“Ryouta, are mountains the same at this time of year?” Aomine wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking his son, considering the confused look he got from the young boy, but yet here he was, standing over his weekend suitcase trying to pack clothes for both him and Ryouta. He didn’t know anything about mountains – he was more of a beach kind of guy, to be honest – and considering that Kagami hadn’t given him an exact location, he wasn’t entirely sure what the weather was going to be when they got there.

“I dunno, daddy, we’ve never been.” Ryouta giggled, the sound infectious.

With a warm smile in return and a shrug, Aomine figured that it’d probably be similar enough to where they lived. Thus, he packed accordingly - and threw in a couple of swim trunks in case that was how mountains worked, too.

\---

“Scarves, check. Jackets, check. Warm sweatpants, check.” Kagami glanced over the list he’d prepared for the trip over the weekend, his messy scrawl almost illegible against the loose-leaf paper that he’d snapped from Tatsuya’s backpacks. Mountains were cold at this time of year, even though they were certainly a lot of fun to go to.

“Papa, pack this too, please.” Tatsuya requested, shoving a box of powdered hot chocolate in the direction of his humming father. Kagami raised an eyebrow and leaned in, tapping the box playfully on top of the dark-haired boy’s head. 

“Better idea – I’ll make you some homemade stuff when we get up there. I’m sure Ryouta will love it, too.” Kagami responded, and Tatsuya’s smile spread a little wider than it usually did, gentle energy infectious. The redhead discarded the box of hot chocolate in favor of replacing it with a couple of things from the kitchen cabinet for homemade hot cocoa, checked his list again, and packed accordingly to finish it all up.

\---

“The windshield is cracking.”

Tatsuya and Ryouted giggled in the backseat as Kagami turned a sideways glare towards Aomine, who was singing obnoxiously along with the radio in a high-pitched tone that probably was causing small cracks in his eardrums as he listened to it. God, what trash was he even singing to now?

“And IiiiiiiiiEeeeeeIiiii, Will Always, L---“ Aomine’s voice cracked sharply and he slapped a hand to his mouth, looking mortified, yet still amused, for a few brief seconds. Kagami couldn’t help it; he dissolved into laughter, and the children followed suit, and when the embarrassment had passed, the car was filled with the rich sound of Aomine’s snickering, as well.

The next time a song came on that Aomine knew, he got the entire car to sing along, and although his eardrums might have been compromised, the car ride certainly seemed a bit shorter for it.

\---

In silence, Aomine found himself tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, moving up mountain roads and grimacing when the car had to adjust to driving on gravel roads. Aomine had never been on back roads like this before; the uneven surface of the road was a pain in the ass to drive on, and he wished that he had been the one to drive earlier so that Kagami would be the one dealing with this surface instead. However, here he was, driving and unable to complain because a certain someone had fallen asleep in the passenger seat. Kagami had bundled up a sweatshirt beneath his head and laid the seat back so that he could ‘relax’ – which was a total lie, considering the redhead had passed out almost as soon as his eyes had shut. 

Aomine felt his right eye twitch as Kagami snored in the seat, and he tried to ignore the agitated spike of jealousy that coursed through him as his grip tightened again on the wheel when the car’s back tire caught a pothole. Glancing back down towards Kagami’s phone where it was nestled into a weird thing (Aomine really had no name for it) attached to the dash, he checked how much further he had to go before he was supposed to make the turn onto the final road. Another minute, really. Although it was annoying to keep checking the phone physically, Aomine had decided that he should turn off the voice because it… annoyed him. Not because he wanted to let Kagami sleep. And if that was close to the reason, it was because he wanted the children to sleep well, not because he wanted Kagami to sleep. Lazy asshole, that guy. Speaking of the kids…

After he’d made the left onto the street that this house was supposed to be on (although Kagami had warned him that the driveway as long, as well), Aomine felt the urge to check on the kids. Their reflections flashed in the rearview, which he adjusted a little bit just to make sure he could see them both for a few moments. Ryouta had totally passed out first, blonde head falling into Tatsuya’s lap. The little boy had unsurely asked Aomine if that was okay, as his own father had already fallen asleep, and Aomine had assured him that it was totally fine; not soon after, Tatsuya had begun to sag against the window he sat by. Ryouta had demanded that he have the middle seat, so that had left Tatsuya to sit by the window, but Aomine figured that the little boy had rather liked it, if his sporadic declarations of passing landmarks had been anything to go by. 

Now the two boys sat, Ryouta’s head on top of Tatsuya’s legs and Tatsuya’s head pressed against the window (how was that even comfortable? Damn kids sleeping in any position they damn well pleased when Aomine couldn’t even sleep in his bed half of the time anymore). Aomine moved his gaze away to focus back on the road, turning into the driveway and gawking as he saw the house in the distance. It was a cozy, well-decorated little cottage; it was by no means a mansion, but it was larger than the townhouse that Aomine called home. It looked like something ripped out of a storybook, which Aomine had not expected, and as he pulled into the driveway, he wondered how much it had cost.

Costs – money – that was all things seemed to come down to this day. He shouldn’t worry about that right now, he told himself. He would refresh himself with this weekend trip, and then he would be able to focus more and perhaps do better in his job search, and he wouldn’t have to fret over bills any longer. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Aomine turned to the still-sleeping male beside him and gave his shoulder a gentle shake.

“Oi, Kagami. We’re here. Wake up.” Aomine murmured, and when Kagami didn’t respond him, he nudged a little harder.

“Nnnn…?” Kagami’s eyes flickered open, foggy with sleep, and he let out a soft sigh that had Aomine wrinkling his nose.

“Your breath is gross. Smells like the peanut butter we had for lunch, but stale or something.” Aomine complained, and after a few moments of staring at him, Kagami reached out and gave a lazy flick to Aomine’s forehead. He mumbled something about Aomine sucking, and although Aomine didn’t really understand, he still found himself smirking at the sleepy redhead.

“Come on, let’s get the kids. Since he’s on my side, I’ll grab Tatsuya…?” He asked, unsure as he began to ask as he realized that although Kagami had let him had some alone time with Aomine, picking up the sleeping child might be a new barrier. As soon as he’d asked, anxiety flickered through him that Kagami might say no, and Aomine would feel like a fool. Instead, Kagami gave him a slow nod. There was something hesitant that he couldn’t place there, and Kagami said something quiet again that Aomine didn’t exactly know how to respond to.

“Always about the kids, nnn?” The redhead sighed, and then spoke up again, voice louder and brighter.

“I’ll grab Ryouta, then.” He affirmed, and then reached to get out of the car. Breathing a soft sigh of relief, Aomine slipped out of the driver’s side and moved back to open the door gently so that the weight that Tatsuya rest on the door with his head wouldn’t be thrown out of balance. Gingerly unbuckling the dark-haired boy, he watched as Kagami mirrored his actions with Ryouta. Aomine waited for Kagami to pick up his son, considering that Ryouta’s head was like a boulder on Tatsuya’s lap. 

Ryouta said something under his breath as Kagami pulled him out of the car, but otherwise, he was like a ragdoll in the man’s arms. Aomine held back a chuckle as he picked up Tatsuya, who immediately adjusted in his arms to cling to him like a small monkey (or something, but monkey was the first thing that came to mind). Aomine resisted the urge to laugh again as the group made their way up to the house, Kagami fumbling with the keypad of the code that he’d memorized on the way down. He’d been doubtful of the security of such a lock over a traditional turnkey, but Aomine told him from experience that it was probably one that changed combinations every time a new client stayed in the house, and Kagami’s worries were mostly soothed.

Stepping inside, Aomine flicked on the lights. It was warm and cozy, and smelled vaguely of cinnamon inside. He’d take more time to admire it in the morning, but for now, they needed to get the kids up to bed. There were three bedrooms in the house, and Kagami and Aomine had both already decided that they would have the children sleep in the same bed – it was only natural, really, considering Ryouta would’ve probably decided to swap rooms even if there were enough. Together, Aomine and Kagami moved into one of the bedrooms.

“Your son’s like a limp noodle.” Kagami commented with amusement as he laid Ryouta down, glad they had decided that both children would wear ‘comfy car clothes’ that basically qualified as pajamas. Aomine snorted in disbelief as he pulled Tatsuya’s arms away from his neck, laying him down besides his own son.

“Yeah, well your kid’s like a little leech.” Aomine quipped in return, and then laughed again as Tatsuya turned on his side so that he could properly grip onto Ryouta’s arm, “Proof’s in the pudding.”

With a fond shake of his head, Kagami took a step towards the door and then faced Aomine once again.

“Goodnight, Aomine. Rise and shine bright and early, right?” 

“You’re such a pain in the ass, but I guess.” 

Aomine flicked the lights off as he left, and heard the soft click of Kagami’s door shutting as he moved into the other bedroom. 

\---

“What do you _mean_ you brought jeans and t-shirts?” 

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot!”

“But you are! You packed the same thing for Ryouta, too!” 

Aomine opened his mouth to protest, but suddenly found himself with a face-full of fabric. Pulling the offending article away, he glared at it for a few moments before realizing that it was a hoodie. But not a hoodie his size – it was a Ryouta-sized hoodie, probably taken from Tatsuya’s suitcase, and Aomine let out a soft sigh of relief as he realized that Ryouta wasn’t going to freeze in the poorly-planned wardrobe that Aomine had put together for him.

“… You would pack extra.” Aomine said, although he had definitely meant to thank Kagami aloud. Sometimes, his brain just didn’t work properly, the filter between his mouth and brain working in reverse or just working against him or something. He didn’t know how to explain it, but he really had intended to thank him.

Calling Ryouta over, he tugged the sweatshirt over his head and fixed it, glad that he’d at least packed jeans for his son. He should probably just go put on an extra shirt for himself, considering the total lack of jackets in his own suitcase.

“Where are you going?” Kagami asked curiously, glancing over his shoulder and looking to Aomine as he moved towards the door.

“Ah, I figured I’d put on a couple t-shirts for warmth, or something.” 

“Idiot, take this!” Kagami practically shouted, and threw a jacket at him. The windbreaker fabric swished in the air and crinkled in Aomine’s grip as he caught it, and although he intended to thank Kagami again – he really did! – he found himself saying,

“A windbreaker? I’m gonna stay warm in this?” Kagami’s eyes narrowed at him and he dug into his suitcase again, which was packed with far too many clothes for just a weekend trip. Considering it was benefitting Aomine right now, however, he decided not to comment on it, instead waiting to see exactly what Kagami was looking for. This time, he was ready for whatever was being thrown, and he realized with surprise that Kagami had tossed a wool scarf to him this time.

“Satisfied?” Kagami asked, funky eyebrows raised, and Aomine felt a leisurely smirk spread across his face. 

“I guess I’m satisfied enough. At least Ryouta’ll be more than satisfied.” Aomine responded, and left the room to head to the kitchen to corral the children. 

If he’d have waited a moment more, he would’ve seen the way Kagami’s face fell, heard the heavy sigh, and perhaps he might have asked exactly what was on Kagami’s mind – or he might have just failed to thank him once again.

\----

“Hot chocolate? What for?” Ryouta looked like a little puppy, butt wiggling as he knelt on one of the stools up at the counter. Kagami glanced to the blonde and smiled, setting the large Thermos full of homemade hot cocoa into the rest of the bag that he’d prepared, filled with small containers of portioned soup and some snacks, enough food to last the four of them for most of the day.

“A special trip surprise. Where’s Tatsuya at?” Kagami replied, glancing over the little boy’s shoulder to see where Tatsuya was.

“Peeing!” Ryouta declared loudly, and Kagami inhaled so fast that he found himself snorting.

“Ryouta,” he began through peals of laughter, thinking of how much the boy reminded him of his father, “the right thing to say would be ‘in the bathroom’.”

“Peeing in the bathroom!”

Kagami had to put the cup he’d been using to pour the hot chocolate into the Thermos down on the counter before he spilled it, laughter shaking his hands and shoulders alike.

\---

“What do you _mean_ you’re good at catching things?” Kagami asked slowly, glancing towards Aomine where he sat with his legs hanging over the dock. It wasn’t so cold that they couldn’t go fishing, which was a relief; if the surface had been frozen, that would’ve thrown a large wrench in his plans. He hadn’t planned for Aomine to be able to actually, like, really fish; he thought that they would just mess around, show the boys how to fish, and maybe catch one if they were lucky. He hadn’t expected that they would be there for less than an hour, and that Aomine would have already caught three fish in the span of that time. It was a catch-and-release lake, but that didn’t stop Aomine from boasting about his catches even when they’d already been let go.

“Yeah! Crawfish, fireflies, criminals, fish, you name it.” The dark-skinned male laughed as he set his fishing line up again, a smug expression on his face. Kagami wanted to wipe it off of his face, but he just shook his head with exasperated amusement and turned to look at his son, who was sitting behind Aomine and staring into the little plastic container of worms that they’d purchased from the nearby gas station.s?” 

“Papa?” Tatsuya asked after a few moments, and Kagami moved over towards him, crouching at his side.

“Yes?” Kagami asked, looking at the little creatures that squirmed in the cup of dirt and then back to Tatsuya, who was still peering into the container as he began to ask his question.

“How come you have to kill them? How come stuff has to die?” 

Well, shit. Kagami hadn’t been expecting that, and he watched as Aomine’s hand froze over the reel, obviously caught off guard by the question, too. Kagami didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t prepared stuff like this – Tatsuya’d never asked him a question like that, but it seemed like Aomine was ready for it, because after a few moments, he stood and moved over towards Tatsuya and sat cross-legged in front of him.

“Tatsuya,” Aomine began, reaching out and giving the edge of the worm-cup a tap, “The worms die because the fish need to eat them to live. Although we don’t kill any fish, the fish that people do eat die so that the people can live. One day in the future, when people are old and have lived a great life, they’ll die, too, and the people will be part of the same cycle. It’s okay, and it’s normal, and the worms will be happy to know that they helped out a big fish, just like a big fish would be happy to know it helped a person.”

Once again, Kagami found himself in awe. Tatsuya nodded and moved away to go see Ryouta, who was sitting with a collection of rocks by his side, and Kagami gaped at Aomine.

“How did you know what to say?”

Aomine laughed, and then looked over to the childish pair with unhidden fondness.

“Ryouta’s been asking hard questions since day one. He’s an airhead, but a curious airhead.” 

Aomine turned to face Kagami, and smiled, and the redhead couldn’t help but return the expression.

“Thanks, Aomine.”

The serenity that had fallen over the two was broken by the slapping sound of something large hitting the water. Both men scrambled to their feet, heads whipping towards the two children, where the sound had originated. Before Kagami had the chance to panic about it, and before Aomine nearly had a heart attack, the sound of amazed little kids floated down the dock.

Ryouta picked up another rock, and positively beamed at Tatsuya.

“I can make the best splashes _ever_.” The blonde enthused, and Tatsuya nodded eagerly before picking up a rock himself. Together, the two of them dropped more of the stones that Ryouta had collected into the lake, giggling as the surface broke and smiling at one another like they’d just done something far more incredible than dropping stones into the water.

“I bet I can skip the rocks, even if daddy can’t!” Ryouta shouted with neverending excitement, and that caused Kagami to lift a brow.

“Can’t skip rocks, eh, Aomine?” He asked, and the other male set his jaw and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I don’t want to take that lip from you, asshole.” Kagami threw back his head and laughed at Aomine’s snide comment, even though he should probably be scolding the guy for cussing with the kids so near. Instead, Kagami decided he’d let his actions speak instead of his words, and so he inspected the pile of rocks for a smooth, flat one that would be best for skipping. He picked a suitable one up, cocked his arm, and tossed it across the surface, where it skid not once, twice, nor thrice, but four times. He could see Aomine stiffen beside him and he had to fight to keep the smirk on his face from growing.

“How?” Aomine asked, and the quiet competitiveness that vibrated in his tone made Kagami’s heart pound with excitement. Kagami rolled his neck in response and flexed his fingers against one another, joints giving a satisfying pop.

“All in the wrists, my friend. All in the wrists.” 

Although the rocks most likely scared all of the fish away anyways, not much more fishing was done after that.

\---

“1…. 2….. 3….” 

Tatsuya and Ryouta counted in unison together. Turning towards the woods, Aomine grinned as he took off running – although he certainly wouldn’t hide far, he also wouldn’t make it easy for Ryouta (especially considering that kid was insanely good at playing hide and seek). Where could he hide? He didn’t know he wanted to climb up in a tree, or if he would hide behind a thick bush, or if he would find somewhere else unique to hide… He could hear the echoing voices behind him, and knew that he was wasting precious time deliberating over a hiding spot. With a huff, he made a sharp cut around the corner, and then suddenly found himself entangled and falling to the forest floor below.

“Aomine, what the hell?!” Kagami’s voice was sharp with annoyance, and as Aomine realized he was looming over Kagami on his hands and knees, he knew exactly why. Kagami lay beneath him, face red with cold and eyes glittering with irritation.

“Oh, shit, my bad.” Aomine mumbled, and although he made a move to stand up, something stopped him. He didn’t know what it was, and it wasn’t for long, but he found himself hesitating anyways. After the moment had passed – and it didn’t go unnoticed by Kagami – Aomine pushed himself backwards and stood, hiding his embarrassment over whatever the hell had just gone on by pretending to dust off his jeans, and the borrowed windbreaker from the other man. The air between them was quiet and strange, and neither of them entirely knew what to do – but they certainly did when one loud voice shouted,

“Ready or not, here I—we--- come!!” 

“We gotta run!” Aomine’s eyes went wide as he realized that he and Kagami were standing (well, Kagami was still laying, although he was starting to get to his feet now) in broad daylight while two little boys began their search. Where could they even hide together? 

“This way,” Kagami breathed, reaching out and giving the sleeve of Aomine’s borrowed jacket a tug. He’d been on his way over to this place anyways before Aomine had crashed into him, and they could probably both fit there… although it might be a tight squeeze. Rounding the next tree, Kagami used his free hand to point towards the place he’d spotted; a giant, fallen tree with a trunk that had been hollowed out by animals, weather, time, or a combination of all of the three, enough so that the two of them could squeeze in and hide within. 

Aomine nodded seriously, as if he were playing a spy game or something of the sort, and moved over to lay down in the trunk first. He left his feet poking out so that the kids could see them easily; although they’d said that they wouldn’t hide by the creek, and the plot of land that was thus dedicated to hide and seek was rather small, he didn’t want to make it too challenging for either of the boys, really. After a few moments of lying there, he felt Kagami slide into the trunk alongside him, hips pressing together as they were almost equal in height as Kagami scooted in just as far was Aomine was.

“… Stinks in here.” Aomine mumbled quietly, and Kagami glanced over to him, unable to tilt his head in the small space to get a good look at the other male.

“Because you’re here. The space is too tight for a guy like you.” Kagami returned, tone playful and bantering although with a certain quality that Aomine couldn’t really identify.

“A guy like me?” Aomine asked, unable to stop himself as he continued on even though he had a feeling that he and Kagami were entering uncharted territory, “What’s that supposed to mean?” The air fell silent between the two of them when the question finished, hanging in the air between them in a manner that was almost teasing, inquisitive even. 

“What do you think it means?” Kagami returned, and Aomine realized with a small start that, perhaps, the tone of the other male’s voice was simply… breathless. Kagami sounded as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath, and that made Aomine’s chest feel oddly and strange, like he couldn’t do it either. Somehow managing to get himself to shift a little in the trunk, Aomine turned so that he could face Kagami a little more, deep blue eyes focused on Kagami’s face so intensely that Kagami could feel his cheeks starting to heat, just a little bit.

“I’m asking you to tell me, idiot.” Aomine murmured, voice low in response, and Kagami paused, wondering exactly what this… weird atmosphere was. It made him uncomfortable, it made him feel strange, it… Should he really share exactly what he was feeling?

“GOT YOU!” 

Aomine let out a squeak that he would most definitely deny later as small hands clamped around his foot, still exposed to the air outside of the trunk – which was far chillier in comparison to the dropped temperature inside of the log they lay in.

“Come out, daddy!” “Papa, I found you.” 

With a sideways glance towards Kagami and a smile that felt strange on his lips, Aomine began to wiggle out of the log, ignoring the pressure it put on his hips and, ah, other areas. He’d barely gotten out when Ryouta latched onto his leg and grinned up at him, looking quite proud of himself.

“Congrats, champ.” Aomine greeted him warmly, reaching down to tug on the pom-pom of the hat that Ryouta had borrowed from Tatsuya.

Kagami emerged from the log not long after, and as he glanced over the kids, he couldn’t help but grin. 

“How about I look for all three of you?” He asked, and ignoring the slightly confused look of the other man his age, he let the next round begin.

\---

“One more round! One more round!” 

“Unggg….”

“Papa, please?”

“Daddy! Pretty please?!”

“… Maybe tomorrow. Your nose is drippin’ like a faucet, Ryouta, and Tatsuya looks like his face is going to turn into a tomato.”

“It’s not dripping at all! It’s _running_ because it wants to hide from you, too! Hide and seek! Hide and seek!”

“Ryouta, you might just drive your poor dad insane. But I guess one more round couldn’t hurt…”

“KAGAMI!”

\---

“Oooooooooooh.” 

Ryouta sounded as if Aomine had just turned dirt into gold with the way that little boy stared at the flames as they started up in the fire pit. Once again, Aomine showed his outdoor prowess (barring his inability to skip rocks, which Kagami would happily lord over his head for the rest of time), and he’d set up a bonfire with the twigs and assorted outdoorsy-material from around the back of the cabin. He’d struck a match on some newspaper, and with a smug smirk, watched as the thing set up in flames after Kagami had confessed to not actually knowing how to make a bonfire.

Kagami still got the upper hand, however, considering how quickly the awe at the fire turned into excited squealing as he pulled out his own personal surprise – even better than the fishing trip, in his own opinion, even if that hot chocolate had been delicious. 

“S’mores.” He announced, dangling the package of chocolate bars, the box of graham crackers, and the bag of marshmallows out towards the two – well, three, considering how Aomine’s eyes were glittering in the firelight at the moment right now – children. 

The redhead was feeling a little excited, too, as he prepared the marshmallows on skewers for everyone. He handed them out to Aomine, and then the children (but not without a brief talk about fire safety, especially considering Kagami’s distrust of Ryouta’s ability to stay away from ‘the pretty fire’). His instinct was correct, really, considering how Ryouta set his marshmallow on fire within moments of sticking it in the flames, despite listening attentively as Kagami told Tatsuya how to hold the marshmallow close to the low-burning embers to make it the nice, golden-brown color.

“Ryouta, now, you’ve ruined---“ Kagami began after he blew out the flames spouting off the sugar, but he found himself pausing, the hair standing up on the back of his neck as if someone was watching him. A quick glance at Aomine revealed that he was, most definitely, being watched.

“Did you just say he _ruined_ it?” Aomine asked in that dangerously slow way of his, and Kagami found himself swallowing heavily. 

“Er, well, he burnt it to a crisp.” Kagami responded somewhat awkwardly, and without further ado, Aomine reached for Ryouta’s skewer, plucked it from his hands, and promptly bit off the entire blackened marshmallow.

“Just how I like ‘em.” He said through the sticky mess, white goo dripping down his face – it was far too hot to be consumed just like that, and way too big for Aomine to fit into a mouth even of his size. 

“That’s… disgusting.” Kagami commented dryly, and with a shrug of his shoulders, Aomine offered Ryouta his own, perfectly toasted, and then moved to help the boy put together a s’more. With Tatsuya still cautiously toasting his own, Kagami got to work on making his first s’more, just how _he_ liked them; with a lot of marshmallow. Three, to be precise.

“Oh my god, that is not going to fit in your mouth.” 

That was the only response that Aomine had, watching as Kagami literally opened his mouth wide and got ready to fit his mouth around an impossibly large treat. Aomine knew enough about this to know that was far too much white (well, actually, it was perfectly toasted, as expected of a chef) – but either way, he didn’t think it was humanly possible for one man to fit so much in his mouth. To his surprise and chagrin, Kagami did, taking a swift bite out of a s’more with _three_ marshmallows on it. Aomine gawked at him for a long time, watching as he chewed, swallowed, and leered.

“Not as disgusting as your marshmallows made out of ashes.” He quipped back in return, and Aomine’s eyes narrowed at him.

“Before you criticize me, criticize your son for eating all the chocolate without even making a s’more.” He returned, figuring that was a tiny bit of a low blow, but hey – it was true.

As if he could sense he was about to be caught, Tatsuya jerked his hands away from the bag and glanced towards the two men with a sheepish expression on his face. Chocolate was smeared across his lips, evidence of what he’d done, fingers messied with melted sweets.

“Tatsuya…” Kagami didn’t even have the heart to say admonish him, because he just found himself grinning so hard his cheeks ached instead.

“The chocolate is good.” Tatsuya said with a resolution that was almost defensive, and Kagami shook his head as he often did at his son. Grabbing a well-planned for paper towel from the roll, he leaned in to wipe off some of the mess, at least, and reassured Tatsuya,

“It’s good, bub. I know.”

\----

The next morning, they slept in, and lost daylight. Yet and still, the trip kept that warm, relaxed feel, and when Kagami decided he wanted to go hiking because of some destination trial book he’d found on the coffee table, no one argued; with more borrowed clothes and another packed lunch, the four of them were out the door.

\---

“It should be right around this bend…” Kagami mumbled, tightening his grip on the paper map in front of him and pulling the edges so that some of the wrinkles smoothed out. He’d taken one of the pamphlets included with the book to use as a map, so that they could navigate the trails behind the back of the house, and although he wasn’t particularly great at using a map, he was fairly sure he was at least _kind of_ on track.

“Shoulda let me have the map.” Aomine remarked over the sound of the children happily playing ‘I-Spy’ behind them. 

“Shut up, I’m pretty sure it’s – There it is!” Kagami practically crowed with delight as, just as he’d predicted, the spot he’d been aiming for came into view around the bend. In front of them was a rock arrangement, but the important part was the water, trickling down into the creek beneath it. It was beautiful, and judging from the look on everyone’s faces, Kagami had done right by deciding to come here instead of the really old, ancient tree that was considering some landmark or something like that.

“Let’s make wishes.” Aomine declared out of the blue, and reaching into his back pocket, he fished out his wallet. Folding open the change compartment, he pulled out four pennies, handing them out to everyone and keeping the last for himself.

“Now, Ryouta, we’ve been over thism, but don’t tell your wish to anyone – so that means don’t say it out loud. Now on the count of three, make your wish, and throw your penny in, okay?” Probably not great for the wildlife, but… Aomine Daiki enjoyed living dangerously.

“One,” He began.

“Two!” chirped Ryouta.

“… Three,” Tatsuya added, after a moment of hesitation,

“Wish!” Kagami finished, and with quiet plops, the pennies hit the surface and sank to the bottom. 

\---

“This overhang is beautiful.” Aomine murmured, hands in his pockets as they stepped out to the final destination on the hike before they turned and headed back. Kagami nodded along with him, taking a step closer to the edge – which had a makeshift, rotting wooden fence built around it anyways – and glancing at the scenery. It spanned for miles, making the houses and trees beneath them seem so small, so insignificant, so much less valuable than what Kagami had at his side right now.

They stood quietly and looked at the scenery – although the silence was interrupted by Aomine warning Ryouta, again, not to get too close to the fence – for a while. Tatsuya and Ryouta were content to look as well, although their viewing included a lot of exploration and whispered discovers to one another. After a few minutes more had passed, Aomine suddenly pulled his phone at and grinned.

“Let’s take a picture.” 

Ushering everyone towards in him, Aomine scooped up Ryouta, instructing Kagami to do the same. Once he had, Aomine took a step closer to him and pressed his face as close as he could possibly get to the other; their cheeks touched, some of Kagami’s wild hair getting into Aomine’s face. 

“A little higher, Kagami.” Aomine instructed the redhead as he flipped the camera to the front-facing one, so that he could see better who was in the screen. The view was mostly obstructed by them, but that was fine; Ryouta and Tatsuya were near the bottom of the shot, Kagami’s head atop Tatsuya’s head and Ryouta beaming up towards the camera, a natural in front of the lens.

“On the count of three…” Aomine began again, but this time, he counted the numbers himself before busting out the best smile he had. Taking a couple more, he set Ryouta down, and then checked the photo album to make sure he had a good one.

“Good?” Kagami asked, leaning over him as he set Tatsuya down.

“Perfect.” Aomine responded, glancing over his shoulder and smiling at the other man. Despite Kagami’s protests, he pocketed the phone and the photo before Kagami had a chance to see it, and was complacent the rest of the walk back. 

\----

Kagami flicked his blinker on as he changed lanes, glancing over his right shoulder and then turning it back off once he’d finished moving. It was late, but not too late; the road ahead of him was mostly an open expanse. Next to him, Aomine dozed in the passenger seat, turned on his side with one arm awkwardly pillowed beneath his head. It didn’t look particularly comfortable, but Kagami didn’t wake him, content enough to listen to the children chatter in the back seat.

“We coulda seen so many animals!” Ryouta declared, and Tatsuya nodded sagely at his side.

“I want to see a mountain lion. It’s like a mountain tiger, which is just basically a tiger.” Tatsuya’s voice gushed affection and adoration so heavily that Kagami forced himself to smother a laugh. Once again, he’d underestimated his little boy’s absolute love for the striped animals; he could find them in anything, it seemed.

“I like wolves. I wanna see a wolves. They howl. I can howl too. Wanna see?” Ryouta replied in return, and Kagami could see him tilting his head back out of the corner of the rear-view mirror.

“AwooooOOooooOO!” 

Even Kagami winced at the volume of the howl, and he was not the only one who was disrupted by it.

“Ryouta, if you howl one more time I’m going to string you up by your underwear from the flagpole outside of your school.” Aomine’s sharp comment was accompanied by a growl, but before he did much else, the man simply huffed, turned on his side, and closed his eyes once more.

\---

They definitely were not this heavy when they were born.

Aomine and Kagami had both agreed on the fact as they dragged their sons from the backseat, each one grabbing their own this time around. Ryouta mumbled something about werewolves as he was plucked up, whereas Tatsuya was quiet as he always was – but still the clinger, as he typically was.

“Luggage in the morning?”

“Luggage in the morning.”

The two men made their way to the townhouse, both fumbling with keys and yawning as they did. Kagami got his door open first, but before he stepped in, he craned his neck to peer onto Aomine’s porch, just staring for a few moments more. Their eyes met, however, when Aomine mirrored the action, and they held eye contact for more than a split-second as it should have been.

“Goodnight, Aomine.” Kagami murmured quietly, pretending that the soft tone of his voice was only not to wake his sleeping child – his sleeping habits were better now, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still somewhat of a light sleeper.

“… Goodnight, Kagami.” Aomine wished him in return, and the two men stepped inside to lay their children to bed.

\---

“So, Tatsuya, how was your, ah, ‘recess’?” Imayoshi asked, resisting the urge to tap his pen considering that a patient yesterday had told him how distracting it was. He kept his focus on the small boy instead of him, beaming up at him with cheeks that looked a little rosier and eyes that perhaps sparkled a more – or maybe, he was simply overimagining things, as he had a tendency to do. It must be in the eyes, he figured.

“Oh, it was so nice! Thank you!!” Tatsuya gushed, and Imayoshi smiled widely, pressing the end of the pen to his lip as he did so, light catching on his glasses.

“See what happens when you let someone know what you think, Tatsuya? It really helps sometimes, not only to let people know how you’re feeling, but even to make things happen.” He asked, unable to resist the chance to turn the situation into a lesson for his young patient. Before he had the chance to expand, however, a familiar redhead burst in, door slamming open and eyes wide as he held a phone in one hand, the confused voice of whoever was on the other line echoing through the speakers.

“So it was _you_ who gave Kiyoshi the idea!” Kagami nearly shouted, and Imayoshi raised a hand.

“Mr. Kagami, please, no yelling in my office,” he began, but he was unable to keep a smug smile from spreading across his face as he shrugged his shoulders, “But I guess you could say, hmmm… guilty as charged?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew, that fluffy stuff was so sweet it nearly rotted my teeth. hope you liked it and thanks again to everyone who's supported me so far! hopefully, this chapter will undergo beta work soon (i'll update the notes when it does), but as for now, it's up unbetaed because i felt bad enough about the delay already. as always, feel free to leave comments as feedback, contact me on tumblr (jaegerl.tumblr.com), or twitter (@oodalnoodles). also, just a general question: would you guys be interested in having a tag for me to track for this fic if you'd prefer to do feedback that way? if so, just let me know and i'll make it happen!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... i don't have a lot of excuses. essentially, the raw truth is that i graduated high school, college kicked my ass first semester, and it's still sort of kicking my ass right now but i knew that i needed to write. getting back into the swing of this fic - and back into knb, which i haven't touched in many moons - was not easy, and i apologize if this isn't up to your standards. i know it's shorter, but it's pretty content-heavy, and i hope this chapter answers some questions and theories i've gotten on tumblr. enjoy the fifth chapter of love and some verses!

"C-could you repeat that?"

Kagami's eyes, trained on the newspaper that rest on his coffee table, drifted towards his child, who was currently readying himself for school. Tatsuya had been getting more independent, these past few weeks; whether it was the influence of his blonde best friend rubbing off on him, or something else, Kagami was unsure. Perhaps - and Kagami cringed to think of this, he really did - Tatsuya was just maturing a little bit, getting older and more mature.

He wanted that, of course, but it pained him to think that Tatsuya was growing up. 

He was even more frazzled when Tatsuya dutifully repeated what he'd said. He didn't believe what he'd heard, so much so that he wanted to ask again - but he swallowed, instead, and parroted the words back to Tatsuya.

"Y-you don't want to take Tiger into school today?" His voice sounded alien to his own ears, distant and somewhat choked.

"No, Papa. I tucked him into bed all nice, and he's gonna rest while I'm here." Tatsuya confirmed with that aggressive nod he'd permanently picked up from Ryouta, and Kagami exhaled slowly in an attempt to keep himself from passing out right on the living room couch.

"If that's what you want, 'Suya. Why don't you go grab your backpack and I'll walk you over to Aomine's, so that he can take you and Ryouta to school?" Kagami stood, weirdly disoriented with the world at the moment, and managed a faint, fond smile at his son. Tatsuya looked puzzled, but moved off to go find his backpack. 

Taking a deep breath, Kagami ran his hands through his hair, tried not to lose his shit right then and right there. Tatsuya didn't want to bring Tiger into school. That was... it was.. monumental. It was incredible. It felt like only yesterday - despite the considerable amount of time that had passed - that Tatsuya had let Ryouta even touch Tiger willingly, and now he was leaving him behind, alone at home, while he went to school?

It was good news. It was great news. It was news that Kagami wanted to celebrate, to shout to the rooftops, to... to tell Aomine. He would tell him tonight, as the pair of them had scheduled (moreso just discussed) a dinner for the four of them, because Kagami wanted to try out a few summer dishes that they were adding to the menu. He would tell him then. 

With barely unbridled joy, Kagami moved to the door, kneeling where Tatsuya was pulling his backpack on. Cupping the cheeks of the small boy, less sallow now that he was sleeping properly and no longer refusing to eat regularly, Kagami leaned in and pressed a kiss to his forehead, brushing bangs away from his eyes so that he could press their noses together.

"Papa?" Tatsuya asked uncertainly, caught off guard by his father's behavior.

"Have a great day, Tatsuya. I'm proud of you, and I love you." Kagami's voice tightened now, the familiar feeling of lingering tears causing his throat to restrict a little, but like most of his tears had been lately, they were happy. When had he become such a crybaby, he wondered (and not for the first time)?

Fatherhood, he decided as he brought Tatsuya over to Aomine's, was a game-changer.

\---

Despite the fact that he'd accepted it, Kagami still found himself sitting on Tatsuya's bed with the stuffed animal in his lap for long enough that he had to speed a little bit on the way to work.

\---

Another fruitful (Aomine can't even think the word without the bitterness seeping into him) day of job hunting.

If only it really were.

He hadn't been lying to Kagami this morning when he said that he would take the kids to school because he was going to be at work. Kagami just misunderstood that Aomine would be at his old job, not searching for a new one, not pacing the streets of the city for 'employees needed' signs hung up at bars, at coffee shops, at convenience stores - wherever he could apply, and start making money again. He'd made plenty of money before, and he was still paying bills - dipping into savings, selling off some of his suit collection and the dishes that he'd started to purchase while trying to wiggle himself back into Kagami's good graces. 

Aomine knew he'd lied. He could tell himself that he hadn't all he wanted, but he was no idiot. Kagami still asked him about work, got curious about how many times Aomine claimed he was working from home ("I don't always have cases to work, it's not a movie, idiot" was the typical response)...

He didn't want to think about it, but it was all he could think about lately. His fingers ached from the amount of time they'd spent clenched into frustrated fists today; he had gone through so much work, so much education and effort to become a detective, and he was sitting here, considering a job at the 7-11 on the street corner. He, by all parameters and marks, was failing, and he knew it.

If Alex tried him for custody right now - which didn't seem likely, considering how little she wanted to do with Ryouta at any and all times - she would probably win. He was putting his son's wellbeing, his son's life as he knew it at risk. He was putting Tatsuya at risk, too, because the hell that the little boy had experienced when Aomine had forced their separation would probably be worse this time around.

It was for this reason that he had multiple applications in the folder in his left hand, even if they weren't for anything he had ever dreamed he would be doing. He, Aomine Daiki, had sworn that he was better than these jobs, and here he was. He could only imagine what his father would say if he could see where Aomine was now, what the judge who had given him apprehensive looks when he fought for full custody would say.

Fuck.

Judging from the look that the old lady had just given him, he did not exactly look street-friendly right now. Dragging a hand down his face, Aomine made his way to the small, intercity park, with a few benches and trees and a fountain in the middle. A discarded newspaper, released today, was spread across a bench in a haphazard fashion; with an agitated huff, Aomine gathered the pages, ready to crumple and toss them when something caught his eye.

'Local Restaurant receives Raving Review from International Critic' was the headline he read, but it was not what snatched his attention. What he'd noticed was the photo of Kagami beneath the headline, smiling with a rather grim-looking, chubby man in the center, with Murasakibara posing on the other side of the man that Aomine inferred to be the food critic.

Why... why hadn't Kagami told him?

As Aomine settled down where the newspaper had been, leaning back against the back rest, he began to read. In essence, although some of the technical jargon escaped him, Kagami's restaurant had been given nearly five stars by a guy who was apparently famous for reviewing a bunch of hoity-toity sounding, probably French, restaurants elsewhere. 

Frowning to himself, he tightened his grip on the edge of the newspaper, the paper crinkling beneath his fingertips as he continued to read. Why hadn't..? Kagami was always so upfront about his accomplishments, sharing them even in his awkward, humble way, that Aomine's ignorance on the review was unnerving. 

If Kagami wasn't going to tell him, well, Aomine would just prove that he was paying attention anyways. Kagami seemed under constant impression that Aomine wasn't the most observant kind of guy, and if he brought home this article and maybe a gift, well, he'd be showing that he was. He didn't know why he needed Kagami to know this - but he wasn't going to question it, either.

He'd found that the most useful tool in his arsenal lately, really. Don't question.

\---

"Sir, is this total alright?"

Aomine glanced at the cash register, where the total of the purchase was presented in bright red letters. Ignoring the way that his heartbeat began to speed up, he nodded at the person behind the register, sliding his credit card across the counter and praying it wasn't declined.

Fortunately, it wasn't, and Aomine left with purchase in hand.

\---

"And theeen, Tacchi was all 'no, you're wrong, Midorimacchi' (except he said it all nice, but I'm not Tacchi) and then Midorimacchi was all huffin' and frownin' and all mad and then Mr. Kuroko was all 'recess is over' and then THAT'S how Tacchi won recess," Ryouta's mouth was moving incredibly fast, the words just as quickly paced as usual, and Kagami can't help grinning at the blonde - who has become so much like his second son - as he rattled off the recess tale.

"How about you tell me what happened, Tatsuya?" He asked Tatsuya with a raised eyebrow, because although it didn't sound like anything bad (although he was slightly shocked that Tatsuya had corrected another child that wasn't Ryouta), he wanted to hear an... easier to follow version.

"Well, Midorima said everyone has a mom and a papa, and I said that wasn't true. Then he told me to prove it, but he left before I could?" Tatsuya sounded a little confused as he related the story to him, but just as Kagami opened his mouth to make commentary, there was a knock at the door.

"That must be daddy!" Ryouta squealed, scrambling to his feet and adjusting his headband as he nearly sprinted to the entrance of the townhouse. Rising to his feet slowly, Kagami drifted afterwards, just in case it wasn't Aomine at the door, and a stranger stood there instead. Ryouta's small hands fiddled with the locked doorknob, tongue sticking out of his mouth as he focused, and Kagami snorted fondly at the blonde's wild behavior.

Soon enough, he got the door open, yanking it wide open to reveal Aomine standing there, hands behind his back. Kagami arched an eyebrow, the pose far too... stiff to be normal for Aomine, who was usually leaning against the doorframe waiting for the door to be opened (Kagami always locked the door, after all, so there was always a brief wait). 

"Hey, champ." Aomine greeted his son, crouching and moving one hand from behind his back to ruffle Ryouta's hair, despite protesting giggles and grumbles from the boy at the action.

"Daddy, I gotta tell you all 'bout my day!" Ryouta declared, and Aomine glanced up to Kagami questioningly, wondering if anything had gone wrong. Kagami reassured him with a brief look (when had reading Kagami's expressions become so second nature?) and so Aomine turned back to Ryouta.

"Can it wait a couple minutes while I talk to Kagami?" 

With a pout, Ryouta gave in.

"Fiiiiiiiine. I'm gonna go see if Tacchi will wear one of my headbands again." Ryouta announced dismissively, and Aomine nearly scolded him for the tone, but the boy was already bounding off (brief irritation forgotten immediately) to search for Tatsuya. 

Standing up, Aomine stepped into the townhouse, shutting the door with his heel and keeping his back carefully towards the door. Something was definitely off about him, Kagami knew, and it was with little patient that he said,

"Alright, alright, hands out from behind your back. You may be the detective, but I'm using the line."

Aomine tried not to flinch, tried not to let that get in the way of where he was going. 

"Just listen, okay? Geez, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're picking up impatience from my kid." Aomine ignored the way his voice shook a little bit, and before he could lose confidence, he launched into a somewhat-rehearsed (if you count the ten minute walk home) sort of speech that quickly derailed off of what he'd planned.

"Okay, well, shit. Uh, alright, I picked up a newspaper today, and I saw your article. You're... you're.. I couldn't believe it. I wish you'd have told me, shit, Kagami, that's awesome. The restaurant review, the fact that you're doing so well.. I haven't even been there yet, and I feel like a shitty ass... uh... friend, for not coming. But, that's not what the point of this is, uhm."

Kagami was turning red, but he was also beginning to feel himself freak out a little bit. He was supposed to be the level-headed one (an exaggeration, but he was probably at least more level than Aomine) but he was having trouble thinking through what was going on. 

And then Aomine pulled out the flowers, crinkling in plastic wrap and plentiful as he shifted them to be in front of his chest, no longer hidden behind his back.

"And, well, fuck." Kagami would've scolded him for profanity, had his mouth not begun to go completely dry.

"What I'm trying to say here, I guess is, uh. You're... you're... great," Aomine's throat constricted, too tight, and there were very brief flashbacks in his head that he couldn't get straight, couldn't get away. Despite his brain telling him no, no, don't do it, he back-pedaled from where he had been going, adding weakly, "Y-you're great for Ryouta." _And great for me, too, somehow, someway._

\---

Kagami couldn't believe what he was hearing. The... flowers, the... weird speech, what... was Aomine doing? Aomine was pretty easy to read, at least Kagami thought so, but he didn't know w---

Was Aomine... asking him out with flowers? Was he assuming wrong by assuming this? He thought of the first time he'd made too many assumptions with Aomine, how wrong that had gone, so with a clearing of his throat, he asked for elaboration,

"Are you...?" Well, he tried to request more details, but his voice died on his lips.

Aomine seemed to get it, though, and he nodded, before hastily adding, "F-for Ryouta!" 

... It threw Aomine off to hear that. He paused, staring at the other male and a heartbeat so loud that it felt as if the ocean were in his ears. What... what did Aomine mean that it was for Ryouta? Was he saying... Was he...

Kagami's pride reacted before he could even finish his thought.

"Are you trying to pity-date me? For your fucking son?" Once the words started, they wouldn't stop, Kagami's heart far too influential and his mind's input dismissed.

"I'm not going to be some psuedo-housewife, Aomine. Just because I take care of, no - just because I love your kid doesn't mean I have to love you, doesn't mean you have to bring me flowers and ask me out for your son. I'm not going to date a guy who's only in it for his kid. Fuck, what's so bad about me? Oh, yeah, I forgot, you can't possibly admit that you have feelings for me, because you're a homophobic asshole wh-- I can't believe you, I'm not---"

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing!"

It was a good thing that Aomine had interrupted, despite the fact that Kagami was angry that he'd broken up his rant, because Kagami had no clue what he wanted to achieve with that, no clue where he was going that, but he was tired of being a substitute -- that he would not be Aomine's substitute for his divorced wife. 

Either way, it was all falling to shit, because now Aomine's panic was evident on his face.

"I don't know what's going on with me! I just -- shit, Kagami, I'm supposed to hate them. I hate them, I hate gay people, I can't be one, it-- it makes me fuck-- fucking sick, and I just, god, Alex and Momoi -- they make me sick, I hate them!" Aomine's chest was heaving, and Kagami was glad that the kids had run upstairs to look at the collection of headbands that Ryouta had started stashing in Tatsuya's room, because this was not a pretty scene.

"You... what?" Kagami was dumbfounded, anger seeping out as confusion did. Alex was Aomine's ex-wife, that much he knew, but.. Momoi... He'd heard Ryouta mention her maybe twice, hadn't thought much of it, because Aomine seemed to have left his life behind when he moved here for a reason that Kagami hadn't felt the need to pry for. Now he needed to know.

Aomine was silent, and that wasn't going to fly.

"No fucking way. You're explaining yourself right now if you don't want me to kick you right out of this damn house." 

Aomine's mouth opened, closed, opened like a fly trap, and finally he mumbled an answer.

"M-my wife. My ex-wife, she... she cheated on me. W-with my best friend. Who.. was a girl." 

\---

_His humming was interrupted by a loud giggle. Weird, Aomine thought to himself, that Alex would be drunk by herself – that was the only tine she laughed in this house, really, or when she found something that Ryouta did particularly funny._

_He heard it then, another giggle, one that was not familiar at all. His hand froze where it had started to reach for the doorknob, and despite the screaming heartstrings of his chest that told him to turn the other way, he turned the knob and pushed the door open._

_The woman’s scream that sounded through the bedroom was not Alex’s._

” _You have the night to get out of the house, Alex. For good.”_

_"And you, Momoi, I never want to see you in my goddamn sight again."_

\---

He’d never forgive her. He’d never forgive either of those women. It was unnatural, anyways. It had to be. 

He would never forget the way that Momoi had looked at him when he had walked into that room, the way that Alex's red lipstick had been smeared across her mouth and bare chest, the way that her eyes had widened and her hands had scrambled for the covers, as if yanking them up over her might preserve some of her dignity, as if it was going to keep Aomine from knowing what was going on.

He would never forgive her for giving him marriage advice, for telling him how to make Alex more involved in Ryouta's life, while she was going behind his back and having an affair with his wife. 

He'd always known Alex didn't do well with being tied down. Aomine hadn't, either, not until Ryouta was born. Ryouta hadn't been the same catalyst for Alex's behavior as he had been for Aomine's, and Aomine had accepted that. They slept in separate bedrooms, but they did not sleep around - or at least, that was what Aomine had thought. As much as he and Alex were distant, he had kept that wedding band on his finger until the night in the hotel, when he'd flushed it down the toilet and never looked back.

Ryouta could've had a normal life. He could've had a mother, and a father, and a nice big house. If Alex would've just fucking love him, then things would've been different. They could've gotten a dog of whatever breed Ryouta picked out at the pet store, even if it was some damn woman's dog, some tiny toy thing that fit in a purse, because Aomine wouldn't have cared if it made Ryouta seem feminine because he wouldn't have been so hyperconsciously aware of the possibility of his son becoming gay, like his own mother.

If he hadn't walked in on them that night, he didn't know how long it would've gone, unnoticed by him. To this day, he didn't even know when Alex and Momoi had started seeing one another. He just knew that, at some point, the woman he wanted to make things work with and the woman who had been there for him since before he was even middle school had started loving one another more than they would ever love him, or his son.

If he hadn't walked i---

\---

"Aomine. Aomine. Daiki."

Aomine felt like he had been dragged out of a deep sleep, out of the deep end of a pool perhaps with the strange dampness on his cheeks, tears that he had been refusing to let fall at all these past few weeks if he could manage.

"I can't read your mind." The anger in Kagami's voice has dissapated to some sort of tone that Aomine recognized as the one he uses when Tatsuya gets scared by something on the television. 

"Sorry."

The word was so soft that Aomine wondered if Kagami even caught it, but from the softening in the redhead's eyes, despite Aomine's inability to meet his gaze, he figured that Kagami had most definitely heard. Tightening his hands around the plastic, Aomine attempted to sort his thoughts enough to make sort of plausible expression.

"... Momoi was my best friend from diapers. Our parents were friends, we lived next door, her parents had considerable pull and always got us put in the same classes at school. She was like a mother and a best friend, really, she.. She used to roll up her magazines, always on something that I liked so she could be informed, and hit me on the head like a dog and scold me to do my schoolwork, but then we'd go out and sit in the malls and make fun of passerby, and talk basketball and... everything else."

He didn't want to continue, but the noise that Kagami made was intended to prod him forward, so he did.

"M-my wife, Alex, she. We... she was a one night stand, I was drunk, she was drunk, that was... what I did in high school. At the sign of serious things, I ran the other way, but she... She didn't want an abortion when she ended up pregnant, and so we decided to get married, for the baby. We tried to make things work for Ryouta, but, we couldn't. We slept in separate rooms, but we stayed together, for him, and then one night I came home and..."

That was his limit, because Kagami could piece together the rest, and Aomine didn't have the words. He wasn't sure when the tears had started to drip down his face, but all he knew was that they had started to drip onto the cellophane wrapping around the flowers, collecting on the smooth surface of the petals and stems. The stems were squished in his grip, his hands having tightened without his noticing at some point in the past couple minutes. His feet were rooted to the ground, unable to move; everything about him felt stationary, felt miserable and useless. He'd never laid himself so raw before, and he hated it. He imagined he looked like a barely cooked steak, raw and bloody and undesirable.

He wanted to excuse himself, but he couldn't get himself to turn to the door. 

\---

The air between them was silent for far more than Kagami desired, as his mind reeled with what had just passed between the two of them. He was still angry that Aomine had attempted to ask him out by pawning his feelings onto his son, but the desire to do something with the anger had lessened as Aomine bared his soul in Kagami's entryway, tears that Kagami had never seen from the other (despite having openly cried in front of Aomine many times himself) trailing down his cheeks and dripping from his chin. It was almost as if Aomine believed that if he didn't touch them, then they didn't exist.

It was only after a few more moments of thought that Kagami found words, a remarkable talent he'd grown into considering how difficult verbalization had been for him before he'd started working in a restaurant with a pastry chef who spoke a sentence every hour, if that. 

"Aomine, I... I'm sorry. I don't know how that must have been for you, but I know that.. you're a good father, and you're good for Ryouta, far better than Alex would've ever been. I can't speak for much more than that, but, here's what I can speak for. You need help."

When Kagami said those words, he expected Aomine's head to reel back, expected Aomine to deny it because 'he was Aomine Daiki and he did things his own damned way', but Aomine didn't even react except to bite at his lower lip and change his staring point from the floor to past Kagami's right shoulder. 

"I... I can't trust someone who hates a group of people so fervently for something that two people did, and, well, from what I've seen from you, I don't think that's what you usually do, anyways." Kagami spoke slowly, feeling rather like he was speaking to a spooked animal, and without haste he raised both hands and settled them on top of Aomine's, still clutched desperately around the bouquet.

That caught Aomine's attention - or at least, his gaze, because Aomine's eyes met Kagami's and didn't automatically shift somewhere else. Aomine stared at him for perhaps a minute before the tears began to pool again, and this time - rather than the slow, leaky faucet drip that had occurred earlier - they flooded his cheeks. Aomine ducked his head and began to sob, his shoulders shaking with the movement. His breath came in heaving gulps that wrenched at Kagami's very core, and his voice cracked around desperate apologies that came between gasping inhales. 

"I'm s-s-so sorry. I... I know it's stupid. God, it's so stupid, I didn't --- I didn't want... I didn't want Ryouta to get his ears pierced because I--- I didn't want people to think he was like his mom, like he was.. like he could be... like earrings make a person gay, I.. I know that's so stupid." The sentences took painfully look for Aomine to speak them, and Kagami felt his own eyes grow moist at the confessions that fell from Aomine, unbridled, like Kagami had kicked down a dam in the tanned male.

"I... just... I. I need to be alone," Aomine mumbled the last bit, and Kagami wondered if it was a good idea for Aomine to be alone. He was a grown man, though, and Kagami was not his mother.

"I'll tell the kids that they're getting a surprise sleepover." Kagami reassured quietly, and without attempting to give him the flowers a second time, Aomine picked his feet up, probably weighing a ton each, and left.

\---

"Huuuuh? Daddy left so soon?" 

"Yeah, Ryouta. He was tired from work, and--"

"Oooh, I bet he was all kinds of grump!! I heard him yellin' at you."

"I heard too, Papa."

"I'm sorry, boys. We should've kept our voices down."

"That's okay! Sometimes you just gotta LET IT GOOOOO~"

".. That's right, Ryouta. Sometimes you've just got to let go."

\---

"A sleepover! Oh boy, Tacchi, a sleepover! On a school night!!"

"Is that okay, papa? A sleepover even though school is tomorrow?"

"I wouldn't let you do it if it wasn't, bub." 

"... Aladdin, too?"

"And popcorn!! Please!!"

"Sure, you two."

\---

If not only to soothe his own nerves and to hopefully give Aomine just a little peace - even if he didn't attach a caption - he sent a photo of both boys, asleep on one another in front of the television, popcorn bowl demolished between the two of them and Aladdin long forgotten.

Aomine read it, but didn't respond, and Kagami took some sort of vague comfort in the fact that he was at least still alive.

\---

Kagami didn't know how Aomine ever successfully got Ryouta ready for school. He was practically wrestling Ryouta into Tatsuya's clothes, despite the fact that the blonde was over the moon that he was 'getting to wear Tacchi's cool clothes'. Although Tatsuya could be a bit belligerent if he didn't sleep well, he was never this energetic, and by the time Kagami had gotten him to the breakfast table, the redhead was ready to go back to sleep for the rest of the day. 

Tatsuya was smiling, though, and Kagami had a weird sense that his oddly intelligent son was finding humor in watching his father suffer.

"Is Daddy comin' with us to school today?" Ryouta asked as he somehow managed to get strawberry jam all over his face.

"You bet your bottom dollar he is."

"Butt dollar?"

The children dissolved into giggles that left Kagami shaking his head, but at least he didn't feel too ill as he hustled them out and to the door of Aomine's house.

\---

The moment Kagami caught sight of Aomine on the couch, he turned to Ryouta with a forced smile.

"Ryouta, how about you go find your favorite Thursday headband with Tatsuya while I wake up your dad? He was so tired he fell asleep on the couch, and I gotta make sure he isn't grumpy again, okay?"

Ryouta nodded energetically, snatching Tatsuya's hand and yanking him up the stairs with a yodel that had Aomine jerking into a sitting position on the couch, eyes wide. Had he not locked the door last night...? Shit.

Last night.

Shit.

Or more accurately, yesterday in general.

Quickly raising his hands to wipe at his face, his eyes were agitated and dry; Kagami could tell that Aomine had been crying from the way that his eyes were bloodshot, from the tracks on his cheeks and the puffiness of his abused eyelids. Even as Aomine tried to hide it, Kagami knew, and he fixed Aomine with a look that he would accept nothing but the truth, and the whole truth.

"Long night." Aomine murmured, voice rough and abused from the previous night's activities. 

"I wouldn't assume anything else." Kagami responded, and then - after a brief pause to ensure that the children were still upstairs, the pitter-patter of their feet and the distant echo of their voices comforting - he sat himself on the coffee table across from Aomine.

"You're coming with us." Kagami began, with no room for interpretation, with no give on either side. He wasn't going to let Aomine's breakdown affect him - he should grow form it, not wallow on the couch, so at least in that sense he was going to be coming with them to go to school.

"And after we drop the boys off, we're going to see the psychiatrist. More accurately, you."

\---

Aomine felt like, not for the first time recently, that the air had been punched from his lungs with unmatched ferocity. He visibly deflated on the couch, thinking about all of the times he was supposed to see a psychiatrist, a counselor, all of those things and he hadn't. Aomine had been raised to take care of his own problems, to solve his own issues. He hadn't asked for help once during his experience with Alex, during their rocky relationship or after; he had seen only what was mandated by the court for him, and once his ordered time was up, he'd stopped.

He didn't do counseling. He'd opened up to one person in his life, and he'd walked in on her head between his wife's legs.

As if sensing his silence, Kagami settled back a little bit, and spoke to break the silence.

"I can't, and I won't, make you go. But I'm not going to accept... those," he gestured to the flowers, wilting and pathetic on the unoccupied part of the coffee table, "... or anything else, until I think this could be healthy for the both of us, and our children."

It was an ultimatum, and Aomine knew it. He'd done everything with Ryouta on his own. He'd never once asked for help, not when the busty women at the office had offered, not when his boss had offered him a little time off. He didn't do charity, he didn't accept help. His father would roll in his grave if he knew that Aomine was even considering seeing a psychiatrist, considering the man had considered the best fix to any problem a bit of sake and more work to forget the problem. Forgetting the problem came easily to Aomine, he was independent, he didn't want to pour his soul out to some stranger---

He glanced towards Kagami as the redhead cleared his throat.

"Make your decision, idiot, before you make the kids late for school." The kids hadn't come down yet, but that was besides the point.

Aomine ran a hand through his short hair, dragging a hand down his neck and rubbing at the sore muscles there from his collapse on the couch.

"You trust this guy?" He asked slowly, voice unsure, gaze apprehensive.

"I trust him with my life. More importantly, with Tatsuya's." 

After a few more moments of silence, as the sound of children's feet echoed above their heads and approached the stairs, Aomine stood, wiping his hands on the seat of his pants, which Kagami noticed now were the same pair from yesterday. Aomine's clothing was wrinkly, but not too unkempt; the bluenette smoothed a hand over his hair, rubbed at his agitated eyes, and then looked at Kagami with a dark gaze that reflected his anxiety over the impending trip like a mirror.

"I'll go."

\---

"Daddy needs cucumber eyes."

"I what, Ryouta?"

"Put the cucumbers on your eyes, like TV, so they get all better."

"... That's not how it works, kid."

\---

"Have a good day with Mr. Aomine, papa."

"We will."

"Take care of him so he isn't grumpy again, okay? When he gets grumpy, Ryouta gets grumpy."

"I'll do my best." 

\---

"This is it? This is the building?

Aomine swallowed heavily as they approached the intimidating business complex, and tried not to adjust his shirt too much as they stepped past the sliding doors.

"Aomine, relax." Kagami's words went primarily unregistered as the elevator doors open, and he began to panic as they closed.

He didn't have the money for this. He didn't have it. He couldn't afford this, he didn't even technically have insurance (he tried not to bang his head against the wall in shame as he thought of what that meant for Ryouta) right now. There was no way he could do this.

"Can we do this another day?" He asked, voice tight as the first floor light flashed, and the elevator continued upward.

"... Why?" Kagami returned the question with another question, voice slow and vaguely confused. Aomine had been confident in the car, relaxed at least to some degree.

"Today's not a good day, uh, y'know. Stuff. Gotta get stuff done. Fuck. Yeah, that."

"... That was god awful, and whatever it is - if there even is anything - can wait. Your mental health is way more important."

The next floor flashed by, and the next, and Aomine felt his palms begin to sweat. He rubbed them into his sides, tried to keep them from getting clammy to no avail. He should be spending money on Ryouta, making sure he had what he needed, making sure he was paying the bills where they stood - not on a guy that he was talking to, just so he could tell Aomine what he already knew: that he was fucked in the head, that his ex-wife had really screwed him up, and while they were at it, his asshole parents probably hadn't helped his journey to healthy adulthood, either.

The elevator began to slow, and Aomine struggled for another excuse.

"I can't pay." He spat out before he could register it, and then his mind began to reel. 

"Y-you see, I forgot, oh, I forgot my pocket. I mean, my wallet."

Kagami knew by now that something was very wrong, but he figured it was just Aomine's impending anxiety over the appointment, especially as his eyes drifted down to Aomine's jeans to see the leather wallet pressed tight against his back pocket. 

"Aomine, I'm not an idiot, I can see your wallet right there." He gestured to said wallet, and then Aomine whipped to face him, eyes wide and frenzied.

"I can't pay because I don't have a job, Kagami! I haven't had a job in... in weeks! Months, probably, I-- I'm unemployed, okay?!"

The elevator slowed to a halt, and the doors slid open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope this might have been somewhat worth the wait for those of you who've been following since the last chapter (nearly 9 months ago, essentially). as always, feel free to leave feedback in the comments and i'll do my best to get back to some, and as always feel free to get in touch with me at jaegerl.tumblr.com or @niceassahi on twitter. additionally, i've started tracking the tag on tumblr 'fic:loveasv' at request so that i can keep up with some of you who enjoy this story. u wu; once again, this work is unbetaed, so please forgive typos and other things of that manner!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you SO SO SO SO much to my babe lexy/tatsudai (tumblr tag) for making some beautiful art to go with this fic! i've linked it below:
> 
> http://31.media.tumblr.com/f08ea479b344a8403ca7216e90e2f7f4/tumblr_n5d5eo18b71tv6fqjo1_500.jpg  
> pic.twitter.com/tqoNnycGim


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